


No Surprises

by rotai



Category: Iron Man - All Media Types, Marvel 616, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Alternate Universe - Teenagers, Angst, Angst and Humor, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Child Abuse, Clint Is a Good Bro, Depression, F/M, Gen, High School, Homelessness, Howard Stark's A+ Parenting, Humor, Hurt Tony Stark, Illegal Activities, M/M, Mind/Mood Altering Substances, Obadiah Is a Creep, Post-Serum Steve Rogers, Rape, Recreational Drug Use, Statutory Rape, Tony Angst, Tony Does What He Wants, Tony Feels, Tony Stark Has Issues, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, Tony Stark-centric, Underage Substance Use
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-27
Updated: 2018-05-04
Packaged: 2018-06-04 22:05:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 16
Words: 50,908
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6677191
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rotai/pseuds/rotai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony runs away to live with Obadiah Stane in New York. There he finds happiness like he's never known before; Natasha and Clint who are fiercely loyal best friends, Steve with his golden glowing hair and blue eyes and tilted smile, a city with all the drugs in the world, Obadiah who is the family he never had. </p><p>But it was never going to last. Soon, Tony is drowning.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Check tags for warnings- it gets worse before it gets better!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony runs away, finds a home, makes some friends.

_A heart that's full up like a landfill_  
_A job that slowly kills you_  
_Bruises that won't heal_  
  
_You look so tired and unhappy_  
_Bring down the government_  
_They don't, they don't speak for us_

Tony smokes in the back of the bus with his feet up on the next row of chairs, longing and listless and vaguely lonely, numbness sloshing up the sides of his skull, buzzing down the separate vertebrae of his spine. He leans against the grime slicked window and watches the streets go past in slow, empty gulps, the skyline fading out under fog, an off colour sickened moon as a lopsided glimpse beyond violet clouds. Apart from the driver, he is the only one on the bus and a distinct feeling of unreality coagulates as they drive on.

He drops the cigarette butt. Grinds it out. Lights another. Two deep pulls, the relaxation of nicotine, acrid smoke scarring the back of his throat, bitter blue black plumes staining the stale air around him.

He has: three dollars and fifty two cents, three joints, two packets of cigarettes, a lighter, two separately wrapped mints, a dead phone and a loyalty card to Starbucks with three coffees stamped off. Also: his jacket, hoodie, shirt, jeans, socks, sneakers. Also:

Also:

The bus stops in the middle of the street. The bus driver says, "This is the end of the line, kid." Tony walks down the aisle and down the steps and out onto the sidewalk. He stops and looks back at the driver. "Thanks for the free ride," he says, trying to smile, trying not to get to his knees and beg for a ride back home, or at least a place to stay for the night, or just some fucking advice.

The driver smiles sadly at Tony. The driver is thinking, poor kid, I hope he ends up alright. How is he going to survive on the streets? The driver is thinking, I wonder what my wife made for dinner.

"Good luck," he says to Tony.

Tony watches the bus drive off and keeps taking pulls of his cigarette, too fast, taking in the smoke like oxygen, trying to calm the awful desperation starting up inside him. He keeps standing there and it gets steadily colder and darker, and only a couple cars come past, and none of them even slow at the sight of him. He chews the inside of his cheek and deliberately does not think. He goes through half a packet of cigarettes before he gets bored, and then he stops smoking and starts walking.

He gets lucky—just round the corner is a twenty four hour coffee shop, with only three people inside—the barista, a guy typing furiously away at a laptop and a homeless woman with a massive duffel bag leaned up against her seat. The bell sounds when Tony opens the door and he steps into a welcome rush of warmth. Everyone looks up and then away; Tony walks to the counter and orders a cappuccino from the barista with a stained name tag that says _Joe._

"Two dollars," Joe yawns. Tony counts out the change and hands it over. The barista turns around and makes the coffee, handing it to Tony on a stained blue tray, and Tony takes it over to the far corner, where he sits down and sips quietly.

And waits.

Thoughts start to filter in as much as he tries to stop them, relentless and miserable and choking. He shouldn't have come this late. He doesn't know where Obadiah lives and he didn't bring anything or prepare at all, and now he has to spend a night in a café because he didn't wait until daylight to come. He doesn't even know if Obadiah will let him live with him, and then what can he do? Not go home. He'll have to stay on the streets until he finds a way to get a job and somewhere to stay, and how the fuck is he supposed to survive long on the streets? He doesn't know anything. He's a fucking inexperienced naive idiot. Tony, at the thought, badly wants to get drunk but all he has left is lukewarm coffee.

He looks up; the homeless woman and student have left, without him noticing. The barista is watching him quietly and Tony glares back at him, daring him to kick Tony out. The barista says, "I'm closing up in an hour."

"It's a twenty-four hour café," Tony frowns.

"Well, not tonight. I have class tomorrow," the barista shrugs.

"Fuck," Tony says, slumping forwards to put his head in his hands. The barista obviously feels bad for him and says, "Do you want a free coffee?"

"Yeah," says Tony. He is given a free coffee. He drinks it, and then in an hour he's outside and watching the barista ride off on his motorbike.

Tony sits down.

Tony stands up again after it starts raining and moves to a doorway, bringing his knees up to his chest and leaning his head against the door behind him. He brings in his arms around him uncomfortably and huddles smaller into himself, watching out the doorway at the rain pattering softly down, at the building lurching up across the street, at the absolute darkness outside streetlight pools on the sidewalk. He falls slowly asleep.

 000000000000000000000

 

He wakes up to someone opening their door and saying in shock, "Oh god, there's a dead person in my doorway."

"I'm not dead," Tony yawns, struggling upwards to a stand. He rubs his eyes and a middle aged woman solidifies. He smiles at her tersely and wanders quickly off before she can call the police.

He feels like shit. He's throbbing all over, from the bruises he left home with layered over with the pain of sleeping on hard ground, all frozen through with the ache of a cold night. His mouth tastes of ash and he's lightheaded with hunger. He tries to make himself feel happier, though; from here on it is only up.

The inside of his wrist is just a smudge of ink by now but he's already memorized the address.

Tony lights a cigarette and wanders along the streets, trying to find someone he can ask directions from. It's a bitter but lazy Saturday morning, people filtering out slowly from their homes, all mostly ignoring him when he makes to start a conversation. He finds a park and walks around it, smoking quietly and watching early bird young families throw pieces of ripped up bread to the ducks in the pond.

He goes up to one of the families and asks for directions to Elvesberry Road, where Obadiah lives. It's a twenty minute walk. He ends up in front of a door on the third floor of the posh apartment block in front of the third door. He drops his cigarette and grinds it out under his heel, kicking it next to the door and then takes a deep breath and shuts his eyes tight and knocks.

Half a minute passes.

The door gapes open inwards. A silhouette of Obadiah appears, in a button up shirt and slacks. Tony's never seen him in anything but suits. Obadiah says, shocked, "Tony?"

Tony smiles cheerlessly. "Can I come in?"

"Of course," Obadiah says, gesturing Tony in. He locks the door behind him and leads him to the kitchen, where the kettle is boiling. "Where is your father? Why didn't you tell me you were coming? Not that I'm not pleased to see my favourite godson, of course."

"My phone was dead, or I would've called," Tony says, taking a seat, hunching in on himself. It is so much warmer inside. He is acutely aware of how much he needs a shower after a night on the streets. He festers, uncomfortable and tragic.

"And Howard?" Obadiah prompts.

Tony frowns at his hands.

The kettle goes off. Tony says yes to an offer of coffee, and Obadiah pours them both a cup then sits opposite him. Tony asks for something to eat so Obadiah gets up again to put bread in the toaster.

Obadiah says sternly, "Tony, why are you here?"

Tony says quietly, "I want to live with you."

Obadiah is taken aback. He stares at Tony in shock. "Did you run away?"

"Yeah," says Tony wearily. "Dad was gonna kill me. He was gonna fucking kill me, Obie, and it's come so close to that loads of times before. You know how he is. He won't care if I'm gone. Please let me live with you, I swear I won't be any trouble, all I need is somewhere to stay—"

Obadiah says uncomfortably, "I don't really have much space..."

"I'll take the couch, it'll be fine," Tony jumps in. "And I'll cook, and clean, and behave... just for a couple years, man. Just until I can get a job."

"Tony, it's not that," Obadiah says, shaking his head. "I'm your godfather. Of course you can live with me and I'll provide for you as much as you need if that's what you want. But your father and I used to be very close, and I can't in good conscience just take away his son..."

"Obadiah, _please,_ " Tony begs. He feels humiliated at having to beg but reminds himself ruthlessly that this is his only hope; he can't just turn and run out. Obadiah still doesn't look convinced, so he says harshly, "I wasn't joking when I said he was gonna kill me." Tony unzips his jacket and pulls up his shirt, to show Obadiah the mass of bruises moulded into his stomach, congealed sickening marks purpling in dark green brown points. "He only stopped kicking me in the stomach because he had to go to work but he promised he'd break my skull open when he came home." He looks up at Obadiah, imploring. "You have to let me stay."

Obadiah is transfixed on his stomach, a strange look in his eyes. He comes around the counter and lays his hand on Tony's bruises. They both stare down at Obadiah's hand, splayed and white against Tony's skin, heavy and warm and still.

Obadiah backs off. Tony breathes again. "Okay," Obadiah says. "You can stay."

"Thank you," Tony says gratefully, hugging his godfather as hard as he can.

 

 000000000000

The rest of the day brings a couple of shocks. Obadiah is nice for most part—he buys Tony a load of clothes, and he tells Tony to stay in the shower as long as he likes—but when Tony steps outside the apartment for a cigarette Obadiah snatches it out of his hand and confiscates his lighter. There's a flash of anger in his eyes that makes Tony cringe but the man quickly calms down and tells Tony that he's sorry, but Tony's got to stop smoking and that's the price of living with him.

\--As if Tony's quitting. He nods along with Obadiah and slips his last cigarettes and three joints into the lining of his jacket.

Also, Obadiah is really touchy feely. He keeps laying hands on Tony's upper arm and knee, leaning forwards to sling an arm round Tony's shoulders, laughing and sliding lingering touches across his lap. It isn't really a big deal—after flinching the first couple times Tony gets used to it and doesn't really mind—but it is a little weird and he's glad when Obadiah puts blankets on the couch for him to sleep on. He half expected the man to suggest sharing a bed.

These are small prices to pay. Living with Obadiah is a dream come true. Tony wonders the whole time why he didn't think of it before. Obadiah doesn't get drunk, doesn't slam him against the wall by his throat at random intervals, doesn't get mad at the slightest provocation; is interested in him, listens to what he has to say, cares about him; buys him things, makes sure the kitchen is stocked with food Tony likes, enrols him in the nearest high school somehow fast enough to let Tony start the next day.

They're drinking coffee the next morning, Obadiah in a suit for work and Tony dressed for school, talking casually about the weather, the news, the neighbours, little inconsequential things. Every moment that passes has Tony in disbelief; he was sure he'd be living 'til eighteen in a state of scared frenzied fear, and this wonderful, sweet normality has him wondering if this is some strange beautiful dream.

But it's not.

He walks to school slowly, backpack slung over one shoulder, waiting until Obadiah drives past him to start asking people for a lighter. The second man he asks has one and lights his cigarette for him, wishing him a good day. Tony smokes slowly all the way to school, closing his eyes at the light headedness of the first smoke of the day.

At school—Shield High, a formidable building of sleek modernity—the receptionist directs him to the principal's office before classes. Tony is lectured on how just because he is a teenage genius, he will not be treated any differently from anyone else who arrives with an expulsion record of _five schools,_ no less, and his previous behaviour will not be tolerated at all. Everyone has their eye on him.

So much for a new start, Tony thinks bitterly, scowling at the desk.

The principal lets him out in time for second period, giving him his timetable which tells Tony he has English next. Tony's angry from the lecture and instead heads to the bathroom for a smoke. Three other guys are sitting on the sinks, smoking and laughing to each other, climbing up to the windowsill to exhale so smoke doesn't fill up the toilets and dropping cigarette butts down the sinks. Fellow smokers are always looking out for each other and Tony is quickly welcomed into the fold. They give him a spare lighter and he stays for a while, making friends easily, and then wanders off to English.

He saunters in half an hour late. His young blonde English teacher raises an eyebrow at him, standing in the doorway probably stinking of smoke, hands in his pockets. "And you are?" she asks pointedly.

"Tony Stark," he says smoothly. "New kid. Principal kept me behind for the morning, so that's why I'm late."

"Right," she says, smiling tightly. "I'll let you off this once. There's a spare seat next to Clint in the back row—Clint, wave—you can sit there for time being, and we'll see how that works out. Do you want to introduce yourself a little more, first?"

"Not particularly," Tony frowns, wrinkling his nose. The class laughs. He grins to himself; he knows just how to play them. Getting popular quickly is an old familiar game to him.

The teacher smiles politely. "That wasn't a suggestion."

"Alright," Tony says, facing the class. "I'm Tony Stark, I'm the same age as all you lot. My last school kicked me out, so that's why I'm here so late."

"Why'd they kick you out?" someone asks.

"I smoked a little bit too much weed," Tony winces. "And--"

"That's enough, thank you, Tony," the teacher interrupts. "You may take a seat."

Tony ambles to the back of the classroom to sit next to Clint. The lesson resumes. They're reading Macbeth, which Tony detests because as a rule teenagers detest Shakespeare, and then they pair up to read through the rest of the scene together and attempt to translate it into plain English. Tony instead finds a kindred spirit in Clint Barton.

"I don't do English," Clint announces when they are ordered to read to each other. "You might want to find someone else to sit next to if you want to do work, because Shakespeare is a dick and I'm not reading any of this shit."

"Fair enough," Tony shrugs. "Humanities are all basically useless."

"True," Clint grins at him. "What did you do in your old school?"

"I'm not really sure," Tony frowns. "I was high most English classes which kind of messes with your memory."

"And that's why you were expelled?"

"Yeah, I'm just being truthful."

"Sure," Clint grins. He's rolling up little paper balls and gives a handful to Tony.

"What are these for?"

"Possibly the best entertainment since dropping glass bottles from high places. Watch." Clint starts flicking the balls into the hair of the guy who sits in front of them, landing them lightly behind his ears with impeccable aim. Tony sniggers and joins in, but isn't very good at it; one goes right over and hits a girl with red hair. "Shit," says Clint in alarm. "You hit Natasha. We're dead."

"What?" Tony says, laughing. The girl he hit is standing up and stalking over to them.

"Hide, quick. She's gonna rip our throats out with her teeth. Oh god, we're fucking dead."

The girl arrives and stands in front of them, raising an annoyed eyebrow. Tony says easily, "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to hit you."

"That's alright," she smiles at him, then punches Clint in the shoulder.

"Hey!" he says. "It wasn't me who hit you!"

"You started it, you dick. I told you to stop throwing paper balls. And what do you do but force the new kid to join in."

"I didn't force him," Clint says pathetically, hiding his head in his arms. The girl punches him again in the arm and then they both laugh, Clint rubbing his shoulder in mock hurt and the girl dragging a chair over to sit in front of them. "I'm Natasha," she says to Tony. "I'm sorry you had to interact with this idiot. He doesn't represent the majority of our school, I promise."

"Nat, you're actually really mean to me," Clint says sincerely. "I think I'm gonna report you for bullying."

"And I'll beat you up," she says.

Tony says, "You're fucking scary."

"Right?" Clint says, turning on him. "She's so violent, I don't know why I'm friends with her."

"Maybe because no one else can stand to be around you?" Natasha asks, smirking.

"Yeah they can. Tony can, can't you, Tones?"

"Sure," Tony shrugs, and that's how he gets two best friends.

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Time flies. Tony, Clint and Natasha are the bad kids, Steve's a hot jock, Bruce is a geek, Obie's a dick.

_I'll take a quiet life_  
_A handshake of carbon monoxide_  
_No alarms and no surprises_  
_Silent, silent_

_This is my final fit, my final belly ache with_

_No alarms and no surprises (let me out of here)  
(Please let me out of here)_

Tony's up at three in the morning, sitting on the windowsill, joint dangling from between his fingers. Exhalations of smoke evaporate up through the narrow gap between the window and the building in front of him. He's sickeningly high, exhausted, jittery, at once juxtaposed between behind trapped behind the walls of his own clammy skin and also floating, unable to hold onto his carcass, snatching desperately on the corpse sitting on the windowsill that sits infuriatingly lax and doesn't move to help him back into his own body. 

He breathes. In and out. Drops the joint.

It falls the long way down.

Tony is—

He is dying, slowly. He is rotting away. What a terrible life to lead, down here in this filth.

He cries silently.

................

Obadiah is making omelettes in the morning, exactly two weeks after Tony arrived homeless at his doorstep. --he's adjusting-- Tony is drinking coffee at the counter and watching Obadiah, who keeps turning to smile at him and ask if he wants extra cheese.

(One time he was in a kitchen, Howard was stone cold sober and had a hammer. Tony had been suspended from his fourth school for sucking a boy off in the science cupboard. _My son isn't a faggot._ Howard held his hand down on the kitchen counter and broke his fingers, one by one, with five precise hammer blows.)

Obadiah hands him his omelette."It's really nice," he compliments Obadiah, mouth full.

"Swallow before you speak," Obadiah orders offhandedly, frying another omelette.

Tony swallows and then stands up to leave for school. Obadiah smiles, "Have a good day!"

"Bye, Obie," Tony waves, leaving the apartment. He starts walking to school, lighting up quickly on the corner and then smoking as he ambles along. He's fallen into the habit of smoking before school and in the middle of the night, when Obadiah's asleep, so he doesn't get caught. He's putting his lighter back into his bag when he finds his flask of whiskey, that still has a few gulps left. They go down fiery and settle, pleasantly warm, somewhere around the bottom of his chest. 

He drops his cigarette outside school and joins the throng of students threading through packed pre-bell corridors, ending up at the lockers where he scans for the easily identifiable flash of red hair and familiar raucous laugh. Sure enough, there leaning against the wall are Natasha and Clint. "Hey," he says, going over.

Clint fist bumps him. "Hey, man. You look like shit."

"And you're going to get cancer," Natasha observes, smelling him.

Tony rolls his eyes. "Leave me alone, both of you. Clint, how many of those energy drinks have you had?"

"Three," says Clint, crumpling up a Red Bull and throwing it into the bin, which is already full of cans.

"Five," Natasha corrects, slapping him round the back of the head.

"It's a science experiment," Clint explains.

"What's your hypothesis?" Tony frowns.

"If a person overloads on caffeine, it will stop having an effect."

"If a person overloads on caffeine, they will spontaneously combust." Natasha corrects again, rolling her eyes as Clint takes out another energy drink from his bag. She tells him, "You're going to have a cardiac arrest."

"It's alright Clint, I support you," Tony tells him. "I'll record the results, if you want."

"You're both going to die," Natasha says in cool frustration.

"We're all going to die," Clint grins, and holds up his hand which is shaking incessantly. "Shit, I think I overdosed."

The bell goes. It's Religious Studies first and Tony convinces them to ditch the class and come sit with him on the bleachers. They sit on the top bench, legs up on the seats in front of them, breath steaming in the cold. Clint drinks more Red Bulls and Tony smokes. Natasha disapproves of them and then steals an energy drink and a cigarette.

Clint is moaning about his brother. "The bastard, he was drunk last night and woke me up way too early to tell me he'd broken the bathroom door. Why did I even have to know that? I don't give a fuck, and like hell I'm fixing it, if that's what he thinks—"

"What time did he wake you up?" Natasha interrupts.

"Half seven."

"You lazy fucker, that's not too early," Tony grins. He and Natasha laugh out in smoke.

"Have you got any siblings?" Clint asks, moving the focus away from himself.

"Me? Nah. That's why I'm so selfish." Tony smirks.

"You just moved here, didn't you?" Natasha asks, watching him closely.

"Yeah," Tony says, taking a drag, shifting uncomfortably.

"Did you move here with your family?"

"Uh, well. My mom died, so I came out to live with my godfather." Which is the truth, in little misguided parts.

Everyone is abruptly sombre. "I'm sorry for your loss," Natasha says solemnly and Clint looks silently, sincerely at him. Tony turns away from them, taking deep pulls and focusing on the burn of the smoke. Conversation starts up again haltingly; Clint says, "Do you think I'll actually die from too much caffeine?"

"Yeah," Tony says. "You'll have a cardiac arrest, then go into coma, then die. You should have a cigarette instead."

"Why?"

"Why what?"

"Why should I have a cigarette instead?"

"Well, Nat's smoking."

Clint accepts that and takes a cigarette. Tony gives him a lighter. Clint lights it, hands the lighter back and takes a drag, but inhales wrong and starts coughing. Tony and Natasha watch amusedly. "First time?" Tony asks, over Clint taking it in again and smoking properly.

"Nah," Clint says. "But I gave up ages ago, on Tasha's insistence."

"Yeah, and this is a onetime thing," Natasha says sternly.

"Good for you guys," Tony grins. "Smoking's shit, anyway."

"And you do it because..."

"Everyone tells me not to," Tony shrugs, taking another drag.

They sit for a while, talking in a haze of smoke, watching the silhouette of the city skyline. Tony smiles and doesn't stop smiling because in this snapshot moment he is wholly content.

............

A week later and he first sees Steve.

It's lunchtime and they go outside, because it's freezing and no one else will be outside and they can't be bothered to interact with normal teenagers. They're sitting on the track—Tony and Natasha cross legged at the edge, Tony smoking and Natasha eating an apple, Clint walking in circles on his hands in front of them. They're all sharing beers that Natasha got them from the corner shop near school (she always gets served) with Tony drinking the most.

A group of guys come out and start jogging round the track. Clint cartwheels over to make room for them and they grin greetings at the trio then jog on. Tony watches them with a furrowed brow. "Who're they?"

"Soccer team," Natasha tells him. "They're starting training now, because the new head of the team is crazy and wants to win the summer tournament."

"Which will never happen," Clint puts in, walking towards them on his hands again. "Shield High is notorious for being shit at everything but archery, sports wise."

"Archery?" Tony asks with a raised eyebrow.

Natasha rolls her eyes. "We have an archery squad made up of exactly one person. Guess who."

"Clint?" Tony says, surprised.

"Correct," Clint says with a shit eating grin, which turns the right way round when he back flips upright. "Which is why we win all archery competitions ever."

"That's pretty cool," Tony says genuinely, then changes the subject as his attention is caught again on the soccer team. "Who's the guy jogging in front of the team?"

They look back—the team has jogged round and is now coming back up behind them. "The captain. Steve Rogers."

"Are you guys friends with him?"

"Yeah, we're friends with everyone. Steve's cool. He got a growth spurt last summer and gained muscles and swathes of girls but he's always stayed a really good person," Clint tells him. He reaches for Tony's cigarette and takes a drag before Natasha notices and knocks it out of his hand. Tony and Clint scowl at her.

"No giving Clint cigarettes," she says sternly, throwing her apple core at Clint. He catches it, then drops it quickly in Tony's lap. Tony yelps and throws it away from him. It hits Steve in the leg.

"Fuck," Tony swears.

The entire football team stops and stares at Tony, who is red faced, and Natasha and Clint who are laughing at him. "Sorry," Tony says. "I didn't see you guys come back around."

Steve smiles tightly at him but doesn't reply, instead turning away and gesturing his team onwards.

"Ugh," Tony scowls at his friends. "I wanted to make a good impression. He was hot." And he was. Steve was as beautiful as a god, although that might be the faint tipsiness that Tony's feeling talking. 

"Well, you made friends with me by hitting me with something," Natasha tells him comfortingly. "Maybe the same will happen with Steve."

"I don't want to be _friends,_ I have you guys. I want a blowjob from Steve," Tony sighs, looking after the team nearing the corner of the track.

"You're a pig," Clint groans in disgust, punching him in the shoulder.

"Fuck you, as if you aren't," Tony says easily, punching Clint back.

Clint jumps on him and hooks an arm round his throat, choking him hard. Laughing, Tony elbows him in the ribs, so Clint lets go and rolls off—Tony rolls on top of him, trying to get a knee into his stomach. They wrestle for a while in the grass next to the track, while Natasha watches and provides cool bored commentary.

The bell goes in the distance. The football team head in. Clint and Tony roll apart. Tony muses, "Should we actually go to class?"

"No," says Clint.

"Wait, I have Physics," Tony says. "I'm going. There's this kid called Bruce who's a fucking genius and I think I'm in love with him. And Physics is awesome, anyway."

"Have fun," Clint says, lying down on Natasha. "Me and Tasha are staying out here in the sun."

"No, we're not," Natasha scowls, standing up and dragging Clint with her. "Coulson said one more skipped lesson and we've got detention."

"But Coulson never gives us detention! He loves us!" Clint protests, hurt.

"And we're going to class if we want to keep it that way."

"This is your fault, Tony," Clint frowns.

"How is it my fault?" Tony laughs, as they start walking back to the school.

"You keep forcing us to skip lessons with you, just so you won't get bored."

"I don't _force_ you. You guys are the bad influences, I'm not the one being threatened with detention."

"Because you've had detention every day you've been here," Natasha says drily.

"True," Tony winces.

"Do you have detention today?" Clint asks. He holds the door open for Tony and Natasha and they file into the school building. Tony's already memorized the floor plans and knows his way around school as well as the rest of them, and they start the walk to their separate classrooms.

"Yeah," Tony replies shamefacedly.

"Why?"

"I tripped the teacher up in Maths."

"What? Why?"

"Well, she was walking past and it was a good opportunity, so I did."

"You're a dick," Natasha tells him.

Tony frowns, "Well, true." Then they're outside the science labs. Tony waves. "Bye, guys. See you tomorrow."

"See you, asshole," Clint waves back then runs to catch up with Natasha who is already stalking off. Tony laughs at their backs and slips into his classroom, finding his place in one of the back seats near a kid called Bruce, who probably arrived ten minutes early and has his nose in a book. "Hey, BB!" Tony grins, sliding into his chair.

"Don't call me that," Bruce says, not bothering to look up.

The class starts, some bullshit gravitational pull theory. Tony says, "How's the gamma rays investigation going?"

Bruce sighs at him, "I'm having trouble with what would happen to some of the particles. The ionising radiation in the gamma rays would strip them of electrons—"

"Is that positive?" Tony interrupts, and cackles for a solid two minutes at himself.

Bruce sits looking at him despairingly. "I hate your science jokes."

"Yeah, but you love me," Tony grins beatifically.

Tony loves Bruce. He's quiet but incredibly smart and sometimes laughs at Tony's jokes. It's a beautiful friendship.

The rest of the lesson they bond more over passive thermal-control technology and the potentials of treating metastatic pancreatic cancer by inhibiting cholesterol esterfication. The teacher ignores them (Tony's last science teachers have already phoned ahead to let it be known that they should leave him alone or things will explode, and that things will probably explode anyway so keep a fire extinguisher on hand) and though Bruce keeps telling Tony to shut up and leave him alone, Tony is mostly certain they are mutual in appreciation for each other.  

After that, the bell goes and he walks home.

..................

Time flies. A month and half after he's run away from home. He hasn't even thought about what he's left behind, not even once. Clint and Natasha have adopted him into their weird closeness and Obadiah keeps saying, I'm proud of you.

Tony has: Clothes. Food. Self medication—coffee, cigarettes, alcohol, weed. A roof over his head. School, full of people in awe of him and girls crushing on him. Real friends that he trusts. A guardian who cares about him.

What he doesn't have:

Also:

And he doesn't know what happiness feels like when you're sober, but this is something close to it.

Obadiah Stane was the right person to run to. He hasn't hit Tony once and cooks him food and buys him clothes, generally providing for him, and they spend evenings together talking with Obie actually genuinely interested in him. Tony has never had an adult be actually interested in him and his opinions and revels in it. Sometimes he has dreams where he calls Obie _Dad_ but he knows it will never come to that—Obadiah might like him, but if his own parents knew he was a waste of fucking space then everyone else will figure it out eventually.

The first glitch is on Wednesday. Tony is back from school with a pocketful of weed that he bought off Aaron's brother, the local dealer. He rolls a joint and smokes in the kitchen with the windows open, eating dried blueberries and chocolate chips.

Obadiah comes home early.

The door opens, "I'm home!" is shouted and footsteps sound, but Tony is too high to do anything but sit there blearily with the joint dangling from his fingers.

"Tony?" says Obie quietly, standing in the doorway of the kitchen. With his suit and broad shoulders, he looks like Howard. Tony shivers and cringes and drops the joint out the window. "Are you smoking?" Obie says in shock, walking over to him.

Tony squints up at him and eats more dried blueberries, full of tense floating fear.

"Tony, I told you not to smoke anymore," Obadiah says angrily, gripping his shoulder. Tony's attention swings and centres directly on that hand gripping his shoulder, the heavy strength in it, the centimetres it is away from his throat.

Tony says, "I wasn't smoking." He doesn't know how many of the words come out of his mouth and how many stay in his head. He looks out the window, at the brightness of the colors outside, wonders how they'll spin if he falls.

"There's smoke _everywhere_ and you stink of it. Have you been lying to me this whole time?"

Tony finishes his blueberries.

Obadiah says in quiet disbelief, "Tell me you're not high."

"I'm not high," Tony parrots, squinting up at Obadiah with his reddened hooded eyes.

So Obadiah slaps him and shouts at him for a while. Tony makes out phrases like _after I gave you a fucking home_ and _just like your fucking father_ which is the first time Obie has sworn. Tony drifts in and out of laughing, falling asleep, ignoring Obie, listening to Obie and feeling sick, and thinking that Obie is Howard. His high wears vaguely off and he starts flinching in anticipation of the next hit. Obadiah says, "Are you listening to me?" and Tony says "No," so he gets slapped again. Then Obadiah searches him and takes his cigarettes and weed, even the few in the lining of his jacket and the ones at the bottom of the drawers Obadiah gave him for clothes and the ones underneath the couch where Tony sleeps, and Obadiah throws them all away. Tony watches wearily but doesn't really care. Then he starts to care, but is too scared and high to do anything, just sits and swings his legs and watches.

When Tony is finally sober Obadiah sits him down and says sorry for shouting, sorry for slapping, but Tony is not to smoke again. It's important. He just cares about Tony and is disappointed in him. Does Tony promise not to do it again?

"Yeah," says Tony.

Obadiah goes to bed. Tony turns on the television and listens to static so he won't think about anything. When he does start to think, he thinks that he's not going to stop smoking, and that because of that he deserves more than a couple of slaps from Obadiah who has done a lot for him. He wants to throw up. He hates himself viciously and falls asleep to the sickening beat of his own panting heart.

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Better late than never?

_And I don't really know, I don't have a clue who I'm supposed to be_  
_I'm drinking on the low, and I've been getting lonely like I'm Omen free_  
_We all laugh, we all cry, we all live, we all die, we ought to knew_  
_We all sleep, we all fuck, we all drunk, we wake up, and that's how we knew_  
_Cause I don't really care and I don't know if I will_  
_And maybe I'm too scared, scared that I'll kill you_

_-Kings/100_

Tony wakes up the next day, lying on the couch with a blanket over him, and is shocked at how fucking bad he feels. He is distinctly aware that if he had a gun on him at this moment, he would put it in his mouth and blow his goddamn brains out. An aching craving for the violence and finality of it fills him, starting as hollow black heat in his stomach and rearing up to choke him.

He lights a cigarette and smokes desperately until it is burnt to nothing. He throws the end out of the window and gets ready quickly then steps out into the kitchen. Obadiah is gone to work already. Tony looks through the cupboards and finds a bottle of vodka. He pours half of it into an empty bottle and walks to school drinking it straight, but is an hour early so sits in the car park and sobers slowly. He's still a little drunk when he finally wanders into school.

Obadiah's slaps give him a faint shadow of a bruise on his cheekbone. Clint frowns at it when Tony comes late into class and sits wearily down next to him. "Who fucked your face up?" Clint whispers.

"It's not fucked up, idiot. There's barely anything there."

"There's still fucking _something_ there, asshole. What happened? Anyone I need to set Nat on?"

"Yeah, the fucking cupboard door."

"The cupboard door?" Clint asks, eyebrows raised, smirking and waiting for a funny story. Tony is too depressed to make anything up and drops his head onto his hands. Clint waits and then pokes him in the shoulder. "Tones. You alright?" Tony ignores him, feeling like absolute shit, wanting to get the next bus out of town and attempt another escape. Clint is worried and shoves him harder. " _Tony._ What's up?"

Tony says, "I'm hungover, leave me alone."

"Alright, dickhead," Clint huffs and leans away from him. Tony is left alone and stews, head in his hands, in dark thick misery. He hates everyone in a slow dangerous sort of way. He wants a fight. He wants to punch someone in the face, fist tight and eyes hot and the crunch of bone under his knuckles and the spray of salt blood and the rush of adrenaline firing him up, lighting up this sick heavy depression. He wants to grab someone by the shoulders, bring them down hard into his knee, the snap of ribs fracturing, the choked off sound of pain.

The young blonde English teacher comes over and says, "Stark, sit up. You're not at home. Do some work."

Tony rears up, angry and furious. "Fucking _make me_."

The teacher raises an unamused eyebrow at him. "Excuse me?"

"You heard me, bitch," Tony sneers, leaning back in his chair and taking a sort of vicious pleasure from his classmates' shocked faces and Clint looking like he's watching a train wreck in motion.

"That language is not acceptable. Principal's office, now." The teacher writes a note and slaps it on the desk, while Tony lazily slings his bag up and kicks his chair away. He picks up the note and grins while he walks out, slamming the door loudly shut behind him.

..................

He's sent home for the day and gets detentions for the rest of the week. Nothing new. He shrugs it away, winces while Obadiah gets called up to take him home, sits sullen and silent in the passenger seat the short ride back to the apartment.

Obadiah is not angry.

Obadiah is disappointed. He waits for Tony to apologise. Tony apologises. Obadiah forgives him, tells him he understands, it's not a big deal, don't do it again, and the door locks behind him as he drives back to work. Leaving Tony alone to contemplate the bruise on his face and slowly unclench because he was expecting a hit. Leaving Tony to think about what his dad would do if he was still home when this happened. Leaving Tony to—

He stews, miserable, regretful, sick.

He gets high and starts moulding, sitting in bed looking up at the ceiling with his flesh crawling, turning green and black, creasing off. It's a wretched kind of pain. He doesn't cry. He tries to get up and it hits him, suddenly, angrily, and he collapses to the floor holding himself round the middle, one hand over his mouth, fingers digging in. He _can't._ He just can't, anymore, at all. He badly wants to die. "Fuck," he gasps. "Stop, stop, stop. _Stop._ " It doesn't work, nothing works. He stumbles back into bed and rips at the skin of his hand, bleeding, digging, wrenching. Savagery in the clench of his teeth. He shakes his head, shivers, collapses. He thinks about—collecting all the pills in the apartment, taking them, going to sleep and not waking up. No, no, he wants violence, something that hurts. Jumping from the window. Smash! Gun against his head, deep breath. Again, again, the gun, the violence, the finality.

"Shut up!" he screams, hates himself. He staggers up and punches the wall, not hard enough to break anything, hard enough to hurt. He bites the inside of his cheeks, tastes copper. He digs his fingers into his closed eyes, breathes heavily.

And sleeps, hopeless.

..............

It's better the next day:

School.

To Clint, in the morning: "Sorry I was shit yesterday."

Clint frowns, "Do you think I'm just gonna forgive you? Just like that?"

Tony frowns and twists his hands. "Yes?"

"You were a dick," Clint reminds him.

"I know?" Tony asks uncertainly.

"Well?"

"Well what?"

"Aren't you going to apologise?"

"I just did."

Clint flounders. "—No, you didn't."

"I did," Tony repeats then sighs. "Alright. I'm sorry I was a dick yesterday."

"Apology accepted!" Clint tells him brightly. "Was that so hard?"

"No," Tony says, rolling his eyes.

Natasha comes up behind Clint. "Why were you a dick yesterday, Tony?" she asks, blank faced.

"I was drunk?" Tony asks.

She touches his cheek. Tony goes still. "Where did you get the bruise?"

"Doorframe," Tony says automatically, then glances at Clint. Clint looks at him, slowly, coolly. He says nothing.

It's alright after that. They skip the first two periods so Clint and Natasha can show Tony the secret way round the back to climb to the roof of the school. They dangle their legs off the side and look out on the school fields and the fence and the streets beyond that. Clint argues with himself about whether it's cool to like Justin Bieber. Natasha and Tony talk about how much of an idiot he is, and Natasha tells him about the time Clint was running away from some guys he pissed off and ran to Natasha's, climbing all the way to her window to get away. But she was at school like he should've been so Clint had to wait balanced on the ledge for two hours until she came back and the guys went off and it rained in that time so she came home to find a sopping teenager huddling precarious and miserable on her window ledge.

Clint says, after a lull in conversation, "Barney's expecting me to cook tonight and I can't fucking cook."

"Why does he want you to cook?" Tony asks, picking his nails and looking out at the school grounds.

"I'm apparently not pulling my weight enough. Fucking dickhead, like he does shit."

"He has a job," Natasha points out.

"I have school, it's just as much work."

"Clint, you do nothing at school. You're failing all your classes."

Clint is offended. "Well, if you call an _A_ failing..."

"What the fuck did you get an A in?" Tony frowns incredulously. "Wait, let me guess. Did you sleep with the music teacher?"

"Fuck you, I have an A in Gym."

"And you're failing everything else," Natasha completes.

"Fuck you. I'm not."

"What else aren't you failing?"

Clint says, "If you're really my friends, you should know without me having to tell you."

"We are really your friends, which is why we know you're failing everything."

"We're getting off the topic," Clint backtracks irritably. "What the fuck am I supposed to cook?"

"Pasta," Natasha suggests. "I'll send you a recipe. Even you couldn't fuck up pasta."

"Toast," Tony contributes. Clint brightens.

"Toast is a good idea!"

"You can't have toast for dinner," Natasha tells him disapprovingly.

"Don't tell me what to do," Clint glowers, then starts singing; "And don't.... tell me _what to do!_ And don't... tell me _what to say_!"

"Shut the fuck up, Clint," Tony and Natasha say at the same time, slapping him round the back of the head. They grin at each other and Clint groans and slumps forwards. "All my friends are abusers."

"We're not your friends," Natasha grimaces.

"I hate you," Clint says, muffled.

Tony looks at the time on his phone and says, "In ten minutes we're going to go sit in the canteen."

"Why? We never sit in the canteen," Clint answers, sitting up and looking round.

"It'll be lunch in ten minutes," Tony says, rolling his eyes.

"So? We're not buying anything."

"We're just going there, alright?" Tony tells him.

"Yeah, but why? Nat. You know. Why are we going to the canteen?"

"You're such an idiot," Natasha sighs heavily.

"What?" Tony frowns, looking at her. "You don't know why we're going to the canteen."

"Of course I do. I know everything. About both of you. Never forget that."

"Nat, tell me why we're going to the canteen."

"Shall I?" Natasha asks Tony, raising an eyebrow.

"Yeah, go on. You don't know."

"Tony has a crush."

"A crush?" Clint asks, astounded.

Tony frowns. "That's not true."

"You mean, you didn't expect me to know."

Tony deflates. "It's not a _crush._ "

"It is, Tony."

"Who is it?" Clint asks excitedly, like a small child.

"It's not a crush, I just like looking at hot human beings. It makes me at peace."

"Makes you horny," Natasha mutters.

"If you want hot people, you can just look at me," Clint says helpfully.

Natasha and Tony turn to him at the same time, look him up and down, and shake their heads. Clint rolls his eyes and says, "Whatever, I don't need your validation."

"Validation!" Tony grins. "Clint said a big word!"

"I'm so proud," Natasha says, mussing up Clint's hair.

"Shut up," Clint says.

Tony finds a joint in one of his pockets. He loves it when he finds weed on him, which is a pretty regular occurrence because he always stashes it somewhere hidden and then forgets where he put it, finding it only a few days later when he wears that particular article of clothing again. He offers it to Natasha and Clint. Natasha says, "Clint's not smoking anymore, remember?"

"It's weed," Tony tells her.

"Clint's still not having it," she says, taking it for herself. Clint splutters at the both of them as they smoke it then relax back, both grinning widely and foolishly, even though it's only a little.

"Fine, if you're not going to give me any, I want to know who Tony's in love with," Clint says, annoyed.

"Not in love, idiot," Tony says back, defensive even when partially stoned.

"Steve Rodgers?"

"What?" It comes out as a too-fast reflex.

"It _is_ Steve Rodgers," Clint laughs, punching Tony on the shoulder. “Aw, don’t look like that. Everyone has a crush on Steve, it’s not that hard to guess and it’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

“It’s not a _crush—_ “

“Oh, what do you call it, then?”

“An appreciation. A _mutual_ appreciation.”

“Mutual? Where the fuck did you get that from?”

“He looks at me. Appreciatively.”

“No, he doesn’t,” Clint laughs. He looks at Natasha who doesn’t say anything. “Are you serious? He doesn’t even register Tony. Tony is an ugly piece of shit.”

Tony doesn’t care, he’s smirking and smug. “Natasha knows it’s true.”

“It’s true,” she sighs. “He does look at Tony. Appreciatively. Even if Tony is an ugly piece of shit.”

Tony tries for a comeback but flails after seeing the time—“C’mon, time to go!” and he drags them both to the canteen, but they’re late and everyone already has seats, so he prepares to exit before Clint and Natasha both start walking directly towards Steve’s table—Steve isn’t there yet, but it is his table because it’s full of his friends like Bucky and Thor and Jane and Bruce (and just because Tony knows that doesn’t mean he’s a stalker)—and then they arrive at the table, and Clint and Natasha grab seats and everyone looks expectantly at Tony.

"Hey?" he says, not knowing what to do with the weight of their stares. "Is it a crime to sit here or something? Where we supposed to request permission? Book in advance?"

"Don't be an ass, Tony," Bruce says easily. "They're all just wondering why you guys are here."

"We're doing what we're doing usually."

"Shooting up in the back of the school?" Jane ventures cautiously. Tony looks at her in shock; he's never spoken to her, but knows her name; short, soft spoken class president with a hunk of a boyfriend.

"No! Eating lunch!" he looks aghast at Clint and Natasha. "Can you believe the false impressions these people have of us?"

"That's what you get for hanging out with us," Clint says, leaning over Tony and stealing a handful of Bucky's fries.

Steve's best friend looks up threateningly. "Watch it, punk," he says in a low tone to Clint. "Nat, aren't you gonna keep your boy toy under control?"

"Harsh," Clint snipes back, enjoying the stolen fries. "What happened to, 'I love you, Clint, you saved my life'?"

"I was drunk, that was freshman year, when the fuck are you gonna let that story go," sighs Bucky in a practiced rush as if they've had this exchange before. Tony leans back and watches amusedly, making a mental note to ask about it later.

And Steve finally comes over. He is resplendent in plain jeans, a white shirt and unzipped hoodie. He is balancing a tray of food and sits down next to Bucky, looking at the three newcomers curiously. "Nice of you to join us," he remarks neutrally. "Tony, right?"

"Yup," Tony grins. "And you're Steve."

"Yeah, you threw an apple at me," Steve smiles with teeth. Tony stares back, smiles wider to ascertain there's no harm done, and relaxes when Steve says, "Relax, I forgive you."

"I feel cleansed," Tony announces. "Cleansed of my sins. I'm a free man. You're like Jesus."

"Think it's gonna take more than that to cleanse your sins, Tones. Considering how many of them there are," Clint says grimly.

"Ah, shut up," Tony bares his teeth. "Steve knows that I'm an angel. Right, Steve?"

"Right," Steve says dubiously. Tony stares at him, encouraging more. "Yes? You seem nice?"

"You seem nice? Is that all I get?" Tony says, heartbroken.

"Well, I don't really know you," Steve shrugs. "All I know is that Bruce says you're annoying."

"Bruce!" Tony says, aghast.

"You are," Bruce shrugs, hands open in admission.

"You'll just have to get to know me," Tony says, with effort. "Linda's party, next week. I'll see you there, hot stuff." He gets up to go. Clint and Natasha make noises of annoyance but rise with him.

"Okay," Steve says, blushing and bemused. "Um."

"Yes?" Tony pauses, waiting.

"Are you even invited to Linda's party?"

Tony frowns. "I'm going to pretend you didn't ask that," he says, and they leave.

"Are you invited to her party?" Clint asks in undertone as they walk away.

"No," he admits. "But that's just a technicality."

It turns out to be just that after all, because Linda is very much in love with him and would be over the moon if he'd come. 

 


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony and Steve becomes friends. Also, some ominous happenings.

_Of the things that I've done wrong_  
_You are the worst of all_  
_Sometimes I still bleed_  
_Hey, you were the worst of all_  
-Neurosis

"Your dad phoned me," Obadiah says. This is Friday. Tony is an hour's late to Linda's birthday bash. Obadiah stopped him before he left, face placid, hand outstretched in front of the door. He has a pinstriped suit on and black shoes and a silver watch. His eyes are dull and concerned. Tony wants to slap him, stamps down the urge, and smiles.

"He did?"

"Yes," Obadiah confirms. "Don't worry. He doesn't want you to come back."

Tony takes a breath, like he's been punched. "I didn't—why would I worry?"

"I just thought I'd let you know," Obadiah continues on. "Because this is good news, if anything. Now you can stay with me for as long as you like."

"Thanks," Tony manages. Obadiah shifts his arms. –It's a beginning of a hug. Tony steps forwards and leans, straight backed, into it. Obadiah tightens his hold and Tony has a moment before relaxing, and hugging back, and closes his eyes. He allows a warm safe minute then extracts himself, smiling genuinely now. "Thanks, Obie. I really mean it. Thank you."

"It's my pleasure, of course," Obadiah says soft and also genuine. "You get to your party now, and call me if you need anything. Have fun."

"I will," Tony says, walking out.

He runs down the stairs—Clint's phoning him now, a repeated irritated buzz in his jean pocket—and outside, spots the blue trashy car parked halfway down the street, jumps in next to Natasha who looks stunning in a skin tight black dress. Clint shouts from the front, "Drive, drive, drive!"

"Alright, calm down," the man driving says irritably. He starts the car and turns to look at Tony. "I'm Barney. Tony, yeah?"

"Yeah, nice to meet you," Tony says.

"Stop talking! We're fucking late! All the vodka's gonna be gone by the time we get there," Clint fumes, as Barney finally starts driving.

"Don't worry, I bought stuff," Tony shrugs.

"Stuff?" Clint says hopefully, looking back.

Tony takes the acid out of his pocket. They were five bucks each tab, which is more than from where he used to live. Clint lunges and snatches one out of his hand. "I love you, Tony," he says, heartfelt, putting it in his mouth. Natasha looks at him pointedly and sticks out her tongue. He puts a tab on her tongue to dissolve. Barney, from the front, says, "Fuck it, go on, then," so Tony gives him one too.

Three left. Tony takes one and gives the other two to Nat and Clint for a top up later. No more drugs for him; he needs to be mildly operational for this party.

 

..................

Tony’s experienced enough with drugs to know exactly how to dose himself to get the trip he wants. Tonight he doesn’t want to trip out wildly or soul search or see walls move, he just want the warm mellow buzz, the easy love, the mind blowing sex. So he's microdosing. When you microdose on LSD, you only hallucinate a little, and it's mostly the same effects as being drunk, just a little more twisted.

He and Nat and Clint walk into the party arm in arm, are greeted by dark rooms and booming music and teenagers with cheap red plastic cups. He hasn’t been in town long but still enough people have got to know him, and come up and talk to him as they float through rooms, coming up slowly and smoothly to the peak.

Linda appears in front of him. Tony wants to brush past her and find Steve, but she is the host, and he should be polite. She’s fairly attractive, in a tight pink dress with a slit up the front, swollen red lips, eyes dark and heavy. “I’m so glad you came!” she gushes, tripping forwards and smelling of vanilla and gin. He catches her by the elbows, feels a strange shockwave. It’s probably the acid but he can feel her skin melting into his palms and some of herself leaking through to him, sweetly and gently. They go together to her bedroom and make out slowly next to her window. He presses her against her wall and watches the large unblinking full moon outside. It yawns hugely at him. It feels full of his dreams, suspended in the sky, reflected in a billion seas this side of earth. He finds that he is in love with Linda. They are in each other’s arms on her bed. Aeons pass. They don’t speak, but he kisses her hair, and she hums against his chest. His hand is between her thighs, and then her hand is between his. They writhe quietly and she bites his neck, suddenly, sharp little teeth like a wolf.

Probably at about midnight she sobers up and goes back to the party, but Tony has just reached the peak of his acid trip. Everything is almost frighteningly intense and the reverberations of the music are embedding themselves in his bones. He goes downstairs as well and gets a drink to take the edge off, closes his eyes into the feel of his fingers around the plastic, into the flesh hanging solidly off his bones. God. What is he doing?

Steve finds him with a soft hand touching his side to get his attention, and a wide sober smile when he looks up. The other boy looks like a ghost, the lights flickering over him, everyone else ghoulish shadows behind him. He is wearing a plain white shirt with the edges of his muscles bunching against the fabric. He says something to Tony, blue eyes turned grey in the wash.

“I can’t hear you,” Tony explains, drink sloshing as he shrugs full bodied.

Steve laughs at him and by unspoken agreement they make their way outside. There, under that yawning full moon, Steve is even more ghost like, and Tony is pooling inside himself somewhere around his ankles. “Better?” Steve says quietly.

“Absolutely,” Tony whispers.

“Are you alright? You look a bit out of it.”

Tony blinks and sees the underside of Steve’s face, blue veins and eye vessels and all. “I’m fine,” he says. “Let’s sit down.” So they sit on the damp grass, cross legged, dark honey shadows stretching all the way back to the closed back door.

“So did you come late? I haven’t seen you this whole time. Even though you invited me.” Steve isn’t accusing, just playful.

“You were invited anyway, and you would’ve come regardless,” Tony says. His hands are in the grass. He feels each separate blade keenly.

“Not the point,” Steve laughs. “You’re strange, Tony. You’re not like everyone else, are you?”

“Neither are you,” Tony says, surprising himself because he means it. There is something about Steve that is different. He’s not just attractive, but there is an honesty in his eyes that Tony has never seen anywhere, a raw sort of realism that has just never seemed to occur to anywhere else. He realises he’s never really thought about Steve before, in any way other than the hottest guy at the school to get ticked off from Tony’s list. So then he realises, in the heady rush of world changing realisations that come when you’re tripping on acid, that he doesn’t even want to fuck Steve. He just wants to be friends with him, and find out where that raw beautiful honesty comes from. “I think we should be friends,” he tells Steve with certainty.

Steve looks at him for a long moment. His eyes are blue again. “Yes,” he says. “I’d like that.”

And so it is.

..................

Sometimes Tony thinks about before. Of course he does. He had friends that he left behind with Howard and misses them sometimes. And sometimes—sometimes he finds himself thinking I want to go home, and yearning for his bedroom, his computers and loose floorboards and fleece blankets, the family pictures on the wall. Sometimes he misses his mother’s grave.

Obadiah converts his spare study into a room for Tony. He puts a wardrobe in there, a desk and a bookshelf. The room is not quite wide enough for a bed so Tony keeps sleeping on the sofa, dragging out blankets and pillows every night when he goes to sleep. Obadiah promises to look into larger apartments so Tony can have a real bed, but Tony assures him he doesn’t really mind. Why would he? He’s had so much less, and now even the bare minimum is a blessing, as long as he doesn’t have the threat of that violence and that hatred hanging around every beer bottle.

He and Nat and Clint sit in the park the weekend after Linda’s party, coming down hard from the acid trip, depressed but smoking weed to lift the mood. They lie on their backs in the dew damp grass and look at the shapes in the clouds. “So did you get with Steve?” Natasha asks, handing him the joint.

Tony smokes deeply. “No, I just messed around a bit with Linda.”

“But the whole point of the party was to get with Steve,” Clint says, taking the joint. “And Barney says thanks for the acid. His cups were talking to him when he got home.”

“Glad to hear it,” Tony cackles. “That wasn’t the point of the party, you’re wrong. Well. It was. But then I decided we’re going to be friends with Steve.”

“We’re already friends with Steve.” Natasha reminds him drily.

“Well, you are. And I don’t mean just friends. We should be properly friends with him. I like him.” He finds no way to describe that quality that he’d seen in Steve that night, and the hunger he has to be around someone with that quality, but Clint and Natasha seem to get it anyway. Somehow the three of them seem to share things wordlessly, as if they’ve known each other for much longer than they really have. Maybe it’s all the drugs they’ve done together.

“Alright, we will,” Clint says decisively. “And in case anyone cares, Joanna blew me yesterday.”

“I punched Jamie Carter in the mouth,” Natasha hums as a follow up.

“Why?” Tony asks, to both of them, and neither answer. They blow smoke up into the sky and watch the clouds fade slowly away.

..................

At school Tony isn’t actually sure if Steve will still want to be friends so is pleasantly surprised when Steve waits for him outside of AP History, one of the many classes they share, and walks with him to lunch. They have a conversation about homework, of all things. They walk in step. Tony is sort of bemused, then they enter the canteen and sit at Steve’s usual table before anyone else arrives, so he texts Clint and Natasha to come and join them. “Aren’t you going to buy lunch?” Steve asks. In answer, Tony pulls out his plastic wrapped cheese and jam granary bread sandwich. “Yum,” Steve laughs at him, going off to collect his own plate of macaroni cheese. Bruce is the only one to arrive while he’s gone and sits next to Tony, staring at him.

“You haven’t got into Steve’s pants yet? Thought you worked faster than that.”

Tony splutters. “One, I do work faster, two, I don’t want to get into his pants, three, no one calls it that anymore so catch up with the times and stop hating on me.”

“Of course you want to,” Bruce says, rolling his eyes. “Or have you forgotten the billions of times you’ve ranted about his perfect ass to me?”

“You’re making that up. And even if you’re not, I’ve changed my mind. I just want to be friends.”

Steve slams a plate of pasta down next to Tony, who doesn’t jump but rolls his eyes at the other, and sits down. “Hey, Bruce. Tony pissing you off again?”

Annoyed at the easy way Steve is talking about him, even though they’ve barely even met, Tony butts in, “I never piss anyone off. Your lunch looks gross.”

“It’s better than yours. What is in that sandwich?”

“Cheese and jam,” Tony says proudly, unpeeling the two pieces of bread to show the contents of to the others.

Clint and Natasha appear silently on the other side of the table. “Don’t mind Tony and his disgusting sandwich fillings. He’s lost his tongue.”

“Right here,” Tony says, sticking it out and pointing at it. “And that’s what Obadiah said as well when I made it this morning. And he said next time I made something so sacrilegious I would have to buy my own food. How rude is that!”

“Perfectly reasonable,” Steve frowns at him. “Who’s Obadiah?”

“My godfather, I live with him,” Tony explains easily. As he talks, Bucky, Darcy, Jane and Thor come and take their seats around the table. They glance at Steve and then at the newcomers then look away and say nothing, as if Steve has informed them of the situation beforehand. Tony hopes it was something like _we’re going to be friends with these new amazing people, alright?_ And not _sorry these freaks have decided to obsess over us for a while,_ the latter of which is probably the best descriptor for the situation at hand.

Lunch goes by much faster than usual, with everyone on the table adapting to the new dynamic of a group with three extra people. They fall quickly into it, though—Tony reminds himself that everyone else here has grown up together and has far more history than he will ever know, but still there is something about the easy friendship that happens that lunch that seems meant to be.

................

Obadiah takes him out to dinner. It’s somewhere expensive and exclusive, so Tony feels underdressed in a jeans and shirt, especially next to his godfather who is in a full blown suit. Obadiah just laughs at him when he voices his concerns. They sit in a little dim table at the back and eat lobster soup and intricately decorated sushi. Obadiah buys him glasses of rich red wine, as a treat.

“How’s school going?” Obadiah asks over dessert, which is a glazed apple tart they’re sharing between them.

“Really good,” Tony says, sinking back into the pleasant buzz he associates with tipsiness. He finishes his glass and Obadiah refills it. “I’ve made loads of new friends. They’re all really nice.”

“I’m glad,” Obadiah smiles at him. “And the detentions have slowed, I’ve heard.”

“Have indeed,” Tony drawls. It’s not that he’s been acting any better, it’s just that the teachers have got used to him and learned that detentions aren’t doing anything in particular.

“Your physics teacher phoned me, as well. He gave me a glowing speech. You’re top of the class in all your science _and_ maths lessons. Why don’t you tell me about these things, Tony?”

Tony shrugs. Because he doesn’t really care? “Don’t want to brag, I ‘spose.”

“Well, you should. You deserve to,” Obadiah tells him, looking at him intently. He leans forwards and puts a hand on Tony’s hand on top of the table, applying a slight pressure to apparently show his sincerity. “I’m really proud of you.”

Tony, for some reason, is uncomfortable at the innocent contact, but can’t see a way to remove his hand without seeming rude. He squirms and tries to smile. “Thanks. I’m proud of me as well, really.”

Obadiah laughs loudly at that and some people nearby turn around and stare at them. He finally removes his hand and pours himself another generous glass of wine. “I’m glad you came to me, Tony.” He tops up Tony’s glass and lifts his. “Here’s to a life together, eh?”

“A life together,” Tony echoes. Their glasses clink.

They get a taxi home and Tony’s more than a little drunk when they go up to Obadiah’s apartment, despite thinking himself a good handler of drink. Obadiah doesn’t seem that affected at all. They watch the television for a while before Tony, embarrassingly, falls asleep on Obadiah’s shoulder. He wakes up with a start. “Sorry,” he says, slurring a little. “Think I’m just a bit tired... do you mind if I turn in for the night?”

“Of course,” Obadiah says fondly and starts making up the couch for Tony, who sits there with his head whirling. But he stops halfway through and looks down with a frown. “This is getting ridiculous. You’ve been here for months and you’re still sleeping on the couch, while I have a perfectly good double bed that we can both fit into. Why don’t we both share that? It’s big enough for the both of us and then you don’t have to sleep here and I don’t have to look for a bigger place.”

Tony really doesn’t care and drags himself into Obadiah’s room, crawling under the covers and closing his eyes. Obadiah appears awkwardly in the doorway. “You are alright with sharing, aren’t you? I know it’s a little strange but as long as we’re both fine with it, it’s a good arrangement. You are fine, aren’t you?”

Tony mumbles an agreement and goes to sleep.

 

..................

They wake up on separate sides of the bed. Tony starts getting ready for school and muses that Obadiah isn’t a bad person to share a bed with. He didn’t roll over onto Tony once and didn’t pull all the covers over to himself and there was a good amount of space between them the whole time. It is a little weird, but Tony doesn’t want to make their general relationship uncomfortable by saying so, so he decides to leave it as it is.

Obie has the day off so Tony has left for school before he’s even awake. He saunters in slowly, smoking as usual, and is for once early so waits outside the school gates, watching keenly for any sign of a friend. Steve is always early for everything ever so it’s not a surprise when he’s the first to turn up, walking down the road with a backpack and earphones, staring serenely ahead as he strides, long legs eating up the distance. He almost doesn’t notice Tony so Tony pokes him in the ribs as he passes. “Tony!” Steve says in surprise, wheeling round to look at him and grinning. He looks as if he’s won a prize and Tony stares bemusedly back.

“Steve!” he mimics, reaching forwards to pull out Steve’s earphones.

“Don’t mock me,” Steve laughs at him, rolling up his earphones and leaning onto the fence next to Tony. “What are you doing here so early?”

“Waiting for you, handsome,” Tony leers. Steve blushes instantly and Tony rolls his eyes. “Of course I wasn’t. I just walked a little fast, I guess.” He takes another drag of his cigarette and Steve follows the movement. “You want?” he asks, offering it with an outstretched hand.

“No, I don’t smoke,” Steve shakes his head and backs slightly away, as if even being within close proximity will corrupt him. “My mom’s a nurse.”

“Of course she is,” Tony laughs. “What, so you’ve never even tried?”

“Why would I want to?” Steve asks plainly.

“I don’t know, curiosity? C’mon, live a little.”

“I should’ve listened to them when they said you were a bad influence,” Steve grumbles, taking the cigarette off Tony. He inhales shallowly and breaks into a coughing fit, quickly handing it back as he clutches at his throat. “That’s disgusting. Happy now?”

“Very happy, and stop being so dramatic,” Tony laughs. “Who said I was a bad influence, huh?”

“Everyone. Ever since you guys have sat with us, they’ve been warning me off you. Many reliable sources have told me about your time in Columbian prison.”

“Columbian prison? That’s a new one. Jesus, I’ve barely moved here, no one even knows me. How can they know that I’m a bad influence?”

“Just sense it, I guess. I’ve still stuck around though, haven’t I?” Steve grins down at him.

“Guess you have,” Tony says slowly. “Regretting it yet?”

“No, not yet,” Steve replies, moving very slightly closer to him. They stay a few silent moments before Steve starts dragging him away so they can be early to their first lesson.

 


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everything progresses.

_Time to pretend that we're alright_  
_In this war of vacant minds_  
_Can you see it now?_  
_Can you feel it?_

-Fabric, Longfellow

Tony never goes out in the day. He and Natasha and Clint always find some group to tagalong in the evenings, and then they all roam the city late into the night, hooking up or picking up or chasing the high. They’re always on something, ket or acid or E or a mix. It’s cheap and easy and warm and Valium makes the comedown go away.

Steve and his friends aren’t like that. They don’t go out at night. They don’t do drugs. They drink occasionally, but only at parties. Instead, they meet for lunch, or to go to the cinema, or to do fucking homework. These are activities that Tony avoids and disapproves of. Nevertheless, when Steve looks at him with those blue eyes and asks him if he wants to meet everyone for coffee at midday Saturday, Tony can’t help but nod agreement.

Natasha and Clint are displeased when they hear about the new plans that Tony has consigned them. “You think if we wanted to spend our time at overpriced cafes, we wouldn’t have done that by now?” Clint asks explosively. Natasha just looks at him with heavy disappointment. Tony rolls his eyes and promises they’ll go out being their usual dangerous selves on Friday night.

\--Which is how they roll round to Saturday, on the end of a 20 hour binge that has lasted since the previous evening, trails of ketamine-trance still limping heavily in their veins, remembering the coffee meeting. The trio turn up at the café which is a little hole-in-the-wall place tucked a few streets away from the school, painted a melancholy blue, with Steve and his friends all seated inside.

Tony takes a deep breath and walks inside. The walls of the café bulge uncomfortably inwards. Everyone he looks at has popping out lips. He wants to turn around and walk straight out, but meets eyes with Steve who just smiles so widely Tony feels his heart melt. He can’t help but smile back in response and bounds over, dragging a chair to sit next to Steve, energy renewed. “Hey, guys!” he says enthusiastically, looking round the table. There’s Bruce, with a typical textbook in front of him, and Thor with Jane on his lap sharing a hot chocolate, and Bucky with a black coffee brooding sullenly, and Darcy with wide rimmed glasses grinning at him. He smiles back and Clint and Natasha sit down as well. “How is everyone, then?” Tony finally asks into the silence.

“We were having a great time. Past tense.” Bucky says flatly.

Steve elbows Bucky but Tony just laughs. He suddenly feels like nothing can touch him. “Can I try some?” he asks, nodding at Steve’s drink, some strange raspberry concoction.

“Of course,” Steve says. Tony’s hands are shaking as he reaches for it and it slips out when he tries to pick it up, spilling all over the table. He jumps up hurriedly and backs away. “Ah shit, sorry, I’ll buy you a new one…”

“Don’t worry about it,” Steve laughs amusedly. “It wasn’t that nice anyway. Just sit down.”

Natasha, in the ten seconds they’ve been there, has somehow slipped away and bought them all coffees. She puts one carefully down in front of Tony and warns him not to spill it. He burns his tongue on it and shouts in shock, everyone laughing at his extreme reaction.

At some point he realizes he’s acting a little strange and maybe staying up all night and then coming out the next day instead of sleeping it off wasn’t the best idea, especially when he wants to impress St—but anyway, he should just keep quiet for a while, until he’s calmed down. He shuts his mouth and listens to everyone else talk. It’s surprisingly enjoyable, even though Steve's group all sober, and they're in a normal-person cafe instead of fucking around in some dangerous part of town. Bucky keeps making these comments about how he doesn’t want the three of them there so Clint, predictably, rises to the challenge and starts insulting him right back, and then everyone joins in on the fairly lighthearted argument.

Once they’ve all finished their drinks they decide to go to a nearby park. It’s a nice day, all mellow sunlight and faint breezes, and they sit around in a large group on the grass. Tony lies back with his head on Natasha’s lap, her hand absentmindedly tangled in his hair. Clint and Bucky have devolved into various childish competitions, like who can climb a tree or jump the nearby stream, even though they’re both six foot muscular males who shouldn’t be acting like kids. Clint is still out of it, his pupils bleeding out into the whites of his eyes, but Bucky has no such chemical excuse. Everyone else is half watching them and half listening to Thor.

“And then I struck him across the face, and he collapsed backwards, but there was still one left. What argument do you have with me? I asked, once before he too would be defeated. And he told me it was my scheming little brother, again, who had bet them they couldn’t ambush me, and indeed they couldn’t. I knocked them all out and went to find Loki…”

Jane admonishes him for violence and everyone laughs. “I never know how serious he’s actually being,” Steve confides in Tony. Tony stares back up at him. From this angle, Steve looks like an angel. All his blond hair is lit in the sunlight and his skin is clear and glowing, and eyes so very blue. He’s blurring around the ages, like the way the sun blurs if you try to stare at it. God, he's beautiful, Tony thinks clearly, and doesn't say it.

Tony needs a cigarette before two hours have gone by, but everyone throws handfuls of grass at him and tells him it stinks when he tries to light it. He laughs and concedes that he’ll walk away, have it and come back. To his surprise, Steve stands up and walks with him. “What, have I converted you?” Tony asks, offering a cigarette.

“No, I just wanted to walk with you,” Steve says, brushing it away.

“Oh. I get that a lot. Most people can’t get enough of my charming company.”

“I’m sure,” Steve says seriously. Tony laughs at him and he continues earnestly, “Really. I’m really enjoying being friends with you three. You—especially. These past few weeks have been—really fun.”

“Careful, Stevie, you sound a little in love,” Tony teases, though Steve doesn’t.

“Right,” Steve says, knocking into his side playfully. “Are you enjoying today, then?”

“Yeah, you guys are chill,” Tony grins. “And Clint and Nat seem to be getting along with everyone. So it’s all good.”

“Good,” Steve says. They chat shit for another couple minutes while Tony finishes his cigarette, then turn to walk back to the rest of the group. “You know, I’ve never seen you sober,” Steve says suddenly, breaking through the jokes.

“What?” Tony says, caught off guard. “Sure you have. Right now.” Steve just laughs at him at that and Tony can’t keep a straight face. “What, am I really that obvious?” 

“Yes, you are. And your pupils are huge. What are you on?”

“Secret,” Tony says, tapping the side of his nose. “I’m coming down now, anyway. We were just bumping lines all night and it lasted a bit longer than I expected.”

“Fair enough,” Steve says easily, showing none of the judgment that Tony expects.

Something is nagging at Tony though. “That’s not really true, is it. That you’ve never seen me sober. I’m sober all the time at school.”

“That’s a lie. Unless we have different definitions of the meaning sober. Just because you’re able to do the work and not have the teachers notice doesn’t mean you haven’t taken anything.”

“Why, Steve, you sound like you watch me,” Tony croons, caught off guard and not liking it.

“You’re interesting,” Steve says simply. “You’re the most interesting person I’ve ever met.”

“What a ridiculous thing to think,” Tony says as a retort, and leans forward and kisses Steve, very briefly, just a warm dry press of lips, and then they draw away and continue onwards like nothing happened at all.

\--

Despite all his outward misgivings, it’s Bucky’s turn to host the group’s weekly movie night and surprisingly enough, he invites the trio of Tony and Clint and Natasha. Tony wants to go but Obadiah doesn’t let him. “You’re always out with your friends,” he complains. “You can stay in for one night. We’ll have our own movie night, how about that?”

How about that. Tony thinks about those three words through the whole time. Through the sitting on the couch together and how Obadiah keeps moving close to him. They go through the Batman movies and right when the Joker is about to blow up a ship full of people, Obadiah reaches upwards and puts an arm round Tony. It’s a move out of a cheap teen movie. He pulls Tony into him and refills his glass. They’re drinking wine. It’s thick and heady. Tony’s warm and pressed up inside his own skin, feeling himself grow heavier, but all his bones lighter, as if any second he’ll just leak out of the shell that has become his body.

How about that? Tony wonders about saying no. He tastes the word, the blockiness of it, the solidness of it. You can’t get around a word like no.

They stay up later and later and Tony gets drunker. He thinks wistfully of all his friends packed into Bucky’s living room, curled up together, covered in blankets and the warmth of each other, instead of trapped here under that thick heavy arm waiting to leak out. Another film ends, the ending credits scrolling up the screen. Obadiah announces that it’s time to go to bed but Tony can’t stand so he has to help him, half carrying him, one slow step at a time. He puts the blanket over Tony and announces he’s going into his office to do some work. Then, impulsively, after looking down at Tony for what seems like ages and Tony staring back up at him, Tony’s eyes liquid brown and some strange fear burning in his chest, Obadiah leans down and kisses Tony, very briefly, just a warm dry press of lips, then he draws away and continues outwards like nothing happened at all.

\--

It burns on Tony’s lips. He wants to—no, he won’t cry. He’s being pathetic. He stumbles to the bathroom and splashes his face with water and drinks from the tap, tries to sober himself up. Then, very quietly, he sneaks outwards—stepping silently outside Obadiah’s office where thankfully the door is closed—and pulls on his shoes and coat and slides out of the door. He keeps stumbling and tripping everywhere, half falling down the stairs where he misjudges where his feet has to go. He wonders how strong the wine was.

He makes it out onto the street and the cold night air definitely helps him focus. He tastes ice at the back of his throat. He continues along for a while until he finds the park where they spend their time, and enters quietly, everything looking strange and dead in the moonlight. He huddles up against a tree and phones Clint.

“…Tony? Hey, Tones! You coming? I thought you weren’t coming. You should come, it’s great here. We’re all missing you! Everyone, tell Tony we miss him.”

“We miss you!” everyone shouts, tinny and distant, some movie playing underneath their excited voices.

Tony hangs up.

Breathes.

Natasha phones him and he lets it ring, holding the phone bright and buzzing in his hands before he picks it up. “Tony?” she says, sounding like she’s outside, with the cars loud on the other side of the phone. “Are you alright? Where are you?”

“Park,” Tony whispers.

“Which one?”

“Where we—weekend. The weekend one.”

“Okay. I know which one. What have you taken?”

“Jus’ tipsy,” Tony says, shivers. “You coming?”

“Yes. We’ll be ten minutes. We’re walking. Don’t move, okay?”

“Okay,” Tony says.

She talks at him a bit more but he doesn’t reply, just listens, and breathes so she knows he’s still there. The stars are bright and cold. He wants to taste them. The grass is damp underneath him.

Natasha and Clint finally turn up as dark shadowy figures from the other direction that Tony came in. There’s no open gates on their side so Tony watches as they help each other climb over the fence. They start walking towards him, becoming larger and more visceral, then loom over him and grab one arm each and help him stand. There’s not much talking. He’s shivering. It takes a long time to go back to Bucky’s because Tony can’t walk very well—it took them ten minutes on the way there, but is now more like forty minutes on the way back—and when they finally get in most people are asleep. Steve and Bucky are still awake and stare at them as Natasha makes a space for Tony on the couch and Clint helps him lie down and gives him blankets. “You’re a little late,” Steve smiles at him, trying to be kind. Tony blinks slowly and goes to sleep.

\--

No one asks what Tony was doing drunk in the middle of the park in the middle of the night when he could have been with them watching films, and why he changed his mind and came anyway. Well, Clint asks, and Natasha asks in her subtle probing manner, but he ignores them both. Then they both make up cover stories so no one else finds out.

Tony sometimes has a terrible fear that Clint and Natasha do really know how fucked up he is and just don’t talk about it to him. But then, if they did know, they wouldn’t still be friends with him.

When he wakes up he feels a lot better, minus the hangover, which is unusually cruel and painful. It’s raining heavily outside and is a Sunday so they all decide to just stay at Bucky’s and turn it into a whole movie day. So Tony doesn’t really miss out. They only leave the house to get more food from the corner shop, and marathon all the shitty films they can think of, tangled in each other and in blankets and stray popcorn bowls.

Tony decides to put Obadiah out of his mind. It didn’t really mean anything, after all. A simple fatherly gesture that Tony overreacted massively to. He knows that if he’d been sober he would have realized it was fine and not freaked out, but the alcohol had distorted him. Obadiah will be angry at him for leaving the house but he’ll just apologize and it’ll be fine.

Clint and Natasha watch him from the corners of their eyes and are quieter than normal for the rest of the day.

For every single one of his smoke breaks, Steve faithfully comes out with him, and they shelter in the doorway against the rain bunched up awkwardly together while Tony satisfies his addiction, blowing plumes of blue violet smoke into the bitterly cold air. Although Steve doesn’t try a cigarette again, he seems to like watching Tony smoke. They talk quietly together in between drags. In the afternoon, they continue the argument that everyone else was having inside about animated movies. “They’re for kids,” Tony tells Steve, rolling his eyes. “It’s all the Disney shit. Don’t be a baby.”

“God, you are so small minded,” Steve shakes his head at him. “So you think all animé is for kids? There’s animé _porn,_ and just because it’s animated you think it’s for kids?”

“You watch animated porn?” Tony asks in horror.

“No! Don’t be ridiculous. I was just making a point.”

“Animated porn, of course that’s something you’re into…” Tony muses, staring off into the distance.

“Shut up. What do you mean, of course?” Steve says indignantly, poking Tony in the ribs. In response, Tony flicks ash into his face, which Steve splutters at and rears away, coming back to push Tony into the rain. Tony staggers out into the street and stays there as it pours down around him, not making an effort to get back into the small sheltered space underneath the doorway.

“Fine, fine, you don’t watch it. You’re too pure for that,” Tony grins, standing there soaking rain dripping over his face. “So you just watch animé? Nerd.”

“You’re the one calling me a nerd?” Steve asks him, raising an eyebrow.

Tony just laughs and drops his cigarette, moving forwards to grab Steve by the arm and drag him out into the rain with him. He clutches onto him while Steve struggles, and the rain continues relentless, so they both end up soaked to the bone.

Then they watch each other, blurred with grey, cold water dripping down their faces, trickling through eyebrows and along the hollows of their cheeks, clinging to their eyelashes and the tops of their lips. It takes a long time before they finally go back inside.

\--

Obadiah isn’t mad when Tony comes back home in the evening. Steve’s mom gives him a lift, and Obadiah happens to be coming in as well, so waves and nods thank you when Tony climbs out of the car. Then they walk up home together, entering the apartment in silence.

Tony keeps waiting in anticipation. He’s reminded of Howard’s particularly bad moods, where he’d drink steadily, watching Tony the whole time, and all Tony could do was wait until Howard finally was drunk enough to beat him. But it was obvious from the start what would happen. It’s the same feeling now, the same nervous tenseness, the calm before the storm except Tony is just so fucking scared. He ran away. In the middle of the night. He ran and disappeared without saying a word to Obadiah, and didn't come back til the next evening, and didn't answer the many missed calls or frantic texts. Obadiah must be fuming.

And he isn’t even scared of what Obadiah might to do to him, that’s the pathetic thing. He’s already decided he'll take it, whatever physical or emotional punishment that Obie wants to deal out. He’s just thinking, over and over again, a desperate litany in his head—please don’t kick me out. Don’t leave me don’t leave me don’t leave me. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.

But all Obadiah does is make dinner and they eat together and chat about the weather, and then when Tony goes to bed, right before Obadiah turns the light off, he says, “I’m not upset about yesterday. I know you have your reasons, your issues with your dad. You’re still working through all that. Just please next time let me know before you leave, so I don’t worry, alright?”

“Okay,” Tony mumbles. “G’night.”

“Good night,” Obadiah says, his faint profile smiling at Tony from the doorway.

Before Tony can help himself, the words leap out of his mouth—“I’m sorry. It really won’t happen again. I’m really sorry.”

“That’s quite alright,” Obadiah says, but now he’s properly smiling, and he sounds pleased.

Tony sleeps better then he has in a while.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony keeps drinking.

_I don’t want to be dependent_  
_On synthetic medicine_  
_That keeps me calm enough to sleep_  
_But kills me softly when I’m weak_  
_Have you ever looked beyond the eyes_  
_Of someone else’s life_  
_and thought that you were fine_  
_Until you turned crazy overnight_  
_**Xanax**_

School is passing especially slow today, in long timeless seconds. They’re supposed to be taking a mid term test but Tony can’t be bothered and has discarded his paper in front of him in favour of staring at the clock, willing the hands to tilt ever downwards, wondering how to fast forward time. Everyone else is silent around him, heads down, hands moving. If it wasn’t for their hands and the messy sounds of their breathing he might think that time had stopped, because the clock certainly isn’t moving.

He takes his bottle out of his bag and drinks, trying not to wince after. It’s straight gin in a water bottle, lukewarm and gross, but he might die of boredom without the pleasant buzz it’s giving him.  After a few gulps, though, he remembers what Steve said about him never being sober, which is just not true. He puts the bottle back into his back and curls his lip. Fine. He won’t touch anything else for the rest of the day.

That’ll show Steve.

The teacher comes over to him after ten minutes and takes him outside. No one looks up, apart from Clint, who meets his eyes and rolls them. Although Clint hasn’t been doing the test either, he’s been doodling so it looks like he’s doing work, whereas Tony has been pretty obviously leaning back and staring at the clock.

“Tony,” Ms Harrison says, holding up his blank page with her whole face pulled into a frown. It’s fascinating how she does it, all the skin over her face shifting up to her eyebrows and focusing in towards him, every molecule of her wanting to vibrate disapproval at him, like a telepathic message that needs to be communicated along with the verbal in her efforts to get through to him. She waits for him to speak but when he’s just standing there, staring in admiration at the efforts of the molecules on her face, and so she shakes the page in irritation in front of his face. “What do you call this? This is the most important test of your school life so far! How else do you expect to measure your progress?”

Tony can’t be bothered for an argument and just wants to go and sit back down. This is infinitely more entertaining than staring at a clock but now he’s actually having to do something all he wants to do is go back and stare at that clock, and maybe drink a little more gin and relax into his own head. “Sorry, Miss,” he says easily, taking the test paper out of her hand. “I’ll go and do it now.”

Expecting defensiveness—he never usually gives in—she stares at him in disbelief. “This is an important test!” she finally repeats, her voice shrill. The door to the classroom is slightly open and Tony sees some of his classmates inside look round at the sound.

“Yeah, I know, I’ll do it now,” Tony explains patiently, trying to inch back towards the door.

“No!” she shouts at him, making him jump. “This just isn’t good enough, Tony! We’re going to the principal.”

“For fuck’s sake,” Tony groans, rolling his eyes, and it comes out louder than he meant to, and now everyone inside the classroom is watching openly and not even pretending to focus on their tests, and Ms Harrison is gaping in shock at him. Finally she grabs him by the elbow and marches him along to the principal’s office, where he’s practically thrown into a seat in front of the principal’s desk while Ms Harrison stands next to him and irately lists all his sins since he’s entered her class. It’s a longer list than Tony would have thought. He doesn’t even remember half of the things she’s talking about, although they do sound like him. He realises guiltily he’s a bit drunker than he thought he was, and this is completely the wrong time for it. He really hopes no one notices.

Ms Harrison finally has to go back to her class because she’s not supposed to leave them, and Tony is left with the heavy presence of the principal settling into the room as the door closes behind her. He realises he’s faintly scared, all of a sudden. He’s always scared when he’s alone with an adult male, especially when they’re angry at him, like now. Don’t flinch, he tells himself sternly.

“Tony,” the principal begins, but then Tony zones out. It just goes on and on and on. It’s really fucking boring. Tony can’t help it, he means to listen and reply in the gaps, but he just keeps switching off, and his fear dissipates fast, because this is just an old boring man who probably hates life and is just doing what he’s forced to so he can get his paycheck, and he probably has a bottle waiting for him at home and a cold faceless wife and he’ll drown his sorrows once he’s done with Tony just so he can forget how close to death he is. And then they’ll both be the same, just two drunk miserable hopeless people, trying to block out the shadows out the back of their heads, failing miserably, always, and always.

Tony goes on like that until he realises that the principal is waiting for a reply. Again. “What?” Tony tries.

“I give up,” the principal says, throwing his hands up in the air. “I’m phoning your guardian. Obadiah’s a good friend of mine and I’ve been trying to work this out so I didn’t have to get him involved, I know how busy he is. But you’re impossible. If he doesn’t talk you out of this mess, you’re suspended for a week.”

Tony sits stupefied and tries to come up with a reply, or even just a reaction, but he honestly just doesn’t care. The only emotion that he can think of that would be appropriate is fear, but he’s bored of being scared, so he just stays apathetic and brainless.

The principal looks at him in disgust. “Are you mute, boy?”

“Can I go?” Tony finally musters.

“I suppose,” the principal says. “Go and have lunch with your friends. I’m going to phone your guardian and arrange here. Come back here straight after lunch. Don’t you dare leave the school grounds. Is that understood?”

“Yeah,” Tony shrugs, getting out fast.

**00**

He’s fifteen minutes late to lunch and the whole canteen turns and stares when he enters, quieting abruptly. “What?” he snaps at them, and all the curious open faces turn back to each other. He walks over to the table with his friends and pulls up a seat for himself, sitting nonchalantly and starting in on his usual sandwich.

There’s silence. He looks up and sees them all staring at him. “What?” he asks, softer but annoyed.

Clint breaks the silence. “We thought you were getting expelled. Ms Harrison proper snapped, comes back screeching about how she never wants to see you again, how it’s all built up and now you’ve done it and you’re gone.”

“Oh,” Tony says, chewing his sandwich.

“So? What happened?” Darcy asks eagerly, eyes alight.

“I don’t know. I’m going back to the principal’s after lunch.”

“Don’t you care?” Bruce asks, looking at him with something like disappointment. Tony hopes he’s reading him wrong and looks away uncomfortably.

“No. They’re not really expelling me, I haven’t done anything huge. It’s just little things that they’re getting annoyed at. I’ll get detentions or something.”

Tony looks at Steve now, who hasn’t said anything at all, who doesn’t even seem interested. He stands abruptly, appetite gone. “I need a cigarette. Nat? Clint?”

“I’m eating,” Clint complains, chewing on a handful of gummy bears. “Go be illegal by yourself.”

So Tony leaves, but they both follow him out anyway. They sit on top of the bleachers—no one else is out, it’s too cold—and Tony gasps in the smoke like it’s oxygen. Natasha elbows him and says, “Don’t get kicked out.”

“What, would you miss me?” Tony says, trying to go for light hearted.

“Yes,” they both say seriously.

“Don’t be sentimental, I might burst into song,” Tony says drily. He lets out a sigh and sags over himself almost theatrically, dropping the cigarette onto the ground below, still lit. He stares at the faraway orange gleam. “Why the fuck is it such a big deal? All I did was not do a test. Now everyone hates me and you two are the only ones acting normal.”

“You’re a bit drunk, Tones,” Clint says, sideways to him, not a trace of a smile on his face.

“I didn’t know anyone noticed,” Tony says, irritated at himself.

“You’re being more obvious than usual,” Natasha says.

“Yeah, well, my mom died today,” he says, and then it’s out there. The words are still in the air in front of him. He thinks everyone has stopped breathing. He wants to take it back, but it’s the truth, and it’s heavy and terrible, even if he tried to forget about it. He relaxes his hands, which have been in fists for most of the day, and feels the trickle of blood from where his nails have cut into his skin. The depression that he’s been trying to ignore rests around him like a shroud and he bites his lip and doesn’t look at his friends in the eyes. “I mean. It’s her anniversary. Of her death. Today.”

“God, Tony,” Clint says. “Fuck.”

Natasha doesn’t say anything, just hugs him, and then Clint does as well, and they huddle there in the cold while Tony shakes and the other two pretend he isn’t crying.

**00**

He goes back to the principal’s office after lunch. To his surprise, Obadiah is there, and so is Ms Harrison, and the school psychologist, and all look very sober and sad. “Don’t worry, Tony,” Obadiah says, coming forwards and putting a heavy hand on his shoulder. “It’s all sorted out. You’re not in trouble.”

“In light of what your guardian has told us, we’re willing to give you a second chance,” the principal says, stinking of pity. “We’d like you to start attending therapy sessions, however. Once a week.”

“Whatever,” Tony says, kicking the ground like a child, or like the surly teenager he is. Instead of disapproval, they just look at him with even more pity, if that was possible, and he curls in on himself.

Obadiah decides to take him home and before he leaves Ms Harrison comes up to him with a sympathetic smile and says, “I’m really sorry about your loss, Tony. I’m here if you ever need anyone to talk to.” Tony wants to slap her but instead forces himself nod expressionless and follow Obadiah out.

In the car, Obie says, “I completely forgot what day it was, Tony. The anniversary of your mother’s death? You shouldn’t have gone to school in the first place. And don’t be angry with me that I told your teachers. They didn’t understand why you were acting out and wouldn’t have forgiven you unless I told them.”

Tony stays silent. He hates Obadiah’s patronising tone. He also wants to say, it wasn’t just today I was acting up, I’ve been a disrespectful fuck to every teacher in the school since the day I got here, and it’s all built up and just happened to explode today, and the only reason they’ve forgiven me is out of pity because my mother’s dead.

Then he stops. He doesn’t want to think about it.

Obadiah goes back to work the second after he’s dropped Tony off. Tony gets out all his alcohol and finishes off, working his way steadily through the last of his gin and half a bottle of vodka. He smokes a lot of weed and takes a handful of Valium. Howard phones him. He watches his phone ring. He throws up. He cleans it up, then passes out on the bathroom floor.

**00**

Clint and Natasha are waiting outside his apartment block when he leaves to start walking to school. “What are you doing here,” he yawns, hungover and nauseous.

“We’re skipping school,” Clint says brightly. “And this was Tasha’s idea, which means it’s a good idea.”

Natasha doesn’t say anything but starts walking, leading them towards their usual park, and slapping the back of their heads when they don’t move fast enough. Tony is miserable with how sober he is and asks if they have anything, but neither have. “You’re staying sober today, or your liver will pass out,” Natasha tells him sternly. “You treat it badly.”

Tony groans and drags his feet until she slaps the back of his head again and tells him to walk faster.

They find a spot under a tree. Natasha spreads out a blanket and Clint pours out the contents of his bag onto it, which is all sweets, mostly gummy bears. Natasha has sandwiches and fizzy drinks and bunches of grapes. They lie around, throwing grapes at each other and seeing who can catch it in their mouths.

“Steve was worried about you yesterday,” Natasha says, dropping it casually into conversation.

Tony brightens. “He was? Why?”

“You’re never normally that drunk at school, or that rude to teachers. He didn’t know why.”

“I wasn’t rude, I just didn’t want to talk to them,” Tony says sulkily. Then he smiles. “So did he ask you about me?”

“Yes.”

“What did you say?”

“I told him to ask you himself.”

“I love him,” Tony says dreamily, sagging backwards.

“I thought you just wanted to be friends with him?” Clint asks, throwing a grape at Tony, which bounces off his nose.

“I’ve changed my mind. I love him. He’s beautiful.”

“They kissed the other day,” Natasha says conversationally.

“What?” Clint chokes. “You did? When? Why did no one ever tell me?”

“I didn’t tell anyone,” Tony frowns. “Did Steve tell you?”

“No,” she smirks. “I just guessed that you did, and you just proved it.”

“I hate you,” Tony moans.

Clint smirks. “I’m really glad you’re here. Before you came, it was just me she tortured with all these mind tricks, but now she has you to turn her energy on.”

“I wouldn’t have to if you two stopped hiding things from me,” Natasha frowns. “When are you going to understand that I know everything, and will always know everything?”

“You don’t know everything about me,” Clint says confidently.

“You slept with Danielle Palmer last Friday,” Natasha tells him easily.

“Fuck. How did you know? She said she wouldn’t tell anyone and told me not to either.”

“What, was she embarrassed?” Tony smirks.

They continue on like that for a while, ribbing each other, smoking occasionally, working their way through their food stores. It’s better than the English lesson that they should be in would be. After a few hours have passed Natasha asks Tony if he wants to talk about it. She doesn’t have to specify what ‘it’ is, and both Clint and Natasha are quiet and serious as they wait. Tony chokes on himself. “I just try not to think about it,” he struggles finally. “And it’s the not thinking that gets to me.”

Clint says, “My parents are dead, but I don’t remember either of them and I never much liked them anyway, but it still hurts, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Tony says, then can’t resist telling them. “She was Italian and used to cook me pasta all the time. She’d tell me fairy tales every night. I never grew out of it. I never think about her because I loved her so much it hurt, and now I can’t remember what she looks like. I don’t think she’d ever forgive me if she could see me now.” He’s never thought any of this to himself because he doesn’t think about things like that, but when he says it he can’t help noticing how true it is.

Natasha calls him something tender and sweet in Russian and folds her hands around one of his. Clint smiles at him, and reflected in his eyes Tony sees his own grief, and it stretches out between them, incandescent and luminous.

And that’s it, and they move on, but he notices that they have a new way of looking at him, and in fact they’ve had a new way of looking at him ever since they came and got him drunk from the park that other night, and now it’s just more pronounced. They’re worried about him. He doesn’t know how to convince them that he’s fine, because he really is. Despite—despite everything. He _is._

Once the school day’s finished, all of the rest of their friends come down. None of them are the type to skip school but they’ve become closer as a group recently so they’re all happy to spent the afternoon and evening together. They stop by the shop and bring even more food, multipacks of biscuits and crisps and doughnuts, and Bucky even brings a bottle of vodka that he passes round so everyone can wince at the taste and pretend to get tipsy off. Tony tries not to be offended when everyone is very careful about not passing it to him—Natasha has imposed a day’s sobriety on him and no one seems willing to risk her wrath—but he doesn’t reach for it, even though he wants to. Instead he just eats a lot, and revels in their warmth.

He woke up with a strange sick feeling that’s nothing to do with the hangover inside his lungs but by the sun sets it’s gone. He’s been trying hard not to think about what the feeling is, but he thinks he knows. Yesterday, when he passed out in the bathroom, Obadiah had come and found him and transferred him to their bed. He hadn’t been angry, just stroked Tony’s hair and told him quietly to go to sleep. Then Tony kept waking up through the night and found Obadiah pressed up close behind him, a heavy leg and arm stretched over him, breaths let out on the back of his neck. Obadiah had left for work before morning had rolled round. It’s only now that Tony realises he must have been dreaming. It’s a strange dream to have, about his godfather cuddling up to him, but Tony is fucked up in a variety of ways, so he can accept that it’s his own imagination.

Sometime late into the evening—they’re all stargazing, and Clint is walking drunkenly around on his hands, and occasionally spinning on his head so grass tangles and sticks onto his hair—Steve takes Tony by the wrist and leads him away for a walk. Tony walks along next to him, feeling very full of his own skin, and enjoying being sober in a way he never really has before. He’s a little bit ashamed about how often he keeps remembering he’s sober. Maybe there _is_ something wrong with him. Fuck, he doesn’t know. Or care.

“So, are you alright?” Steve asks. His skin is shaded grey in the dark. His lashes cast long spidery shadows over his face. “You seemed a bit off yesterday.”

“Yeah, just some family stuff,” Tony shrugs. “I was just sorting through it.”

“Right,” Steve says. “You know, I’m here if you need someone to talk to.” It was infuriating coming from Ms Harrison but sweet from Tony. Tony was joking earlier when he said he was in love with Steve, but when Steve looks at him like this and says things like that, he thinks that someday he could be.

“Thanks,” he says. “I know.”

They walk along and watch faint clouds skitter across the skyline, and rest convulsively at the edges of their vision, while the rest of the sky is broad and empty and struck through with stars, that gleam so brightly they might have been struck, or else they’re punctures and they’re leaking the light from heaven.

“Where did you used to live, Tony? Before you moved here?”

“LA,” Tony says, surprised Steve doesn’t already know. “I like it here better, though. Even if it’s colder.”

“You do?” Steve asks, smiling. “So it’s not all beaches and sun over there?”

“No, it is, I just like it here better,” Tony says, smiling back. “I have better friends here, so maybe that’s why. You’re the downside, of course, but I’m trying to get over that.”

“Hey,” Steve says indignantly, shoving him with his shoulder. Tony falls off the path and comes back hard, bumping into Steve with his full weight, so the other staggers and grabs onto Tony before he falls. “I didn’t do it that hard!” Steve laughs at Tony.

“Sometimes I don’t know my own strength,” Tony shrugs, pretending to look modest.

“You’re ridiculous,” Steve sighs.

“But you love me anyway?”

That’s when they kiss again. This time they sit down for it, onto a bench they’ve conveniently stopped by, pressing into each other, feeling the wooden slats underneath them and the cool cold air just as much as each other, as soft skin of their lips and their hands moving and grasping and the wetness of the insides of their mouths. It’s not romantic or sexy, it’s just intimate, and Tony feels as if he’s falling into Steve, forever and forever and forever. They breathe and move and clutch and each other like they’re stupid and young, like they’re falling for each other, like they’re falling into each other, like the other is a chasm that they’ve loosened themselves into, and now it’s a free fall, forever and forever and forever. It’s Alice through the rabbit hole. Tony doesn’t close his eyes. He watches Steve’s closed eyes, his gold hair, and the stars above. Something hurts sharply inside of him. A high sharp keen starts up painfully in the back of his head. He tries to work out what’s wrong with him. He smiles at Steve when they draw away from each other, and they walk home holding hands, and he hides that terrible sourness inside of him.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A date, and the vicious reappearance of Tony's past.

_And nothing's the same but_  
The memories remain oh  
They're haunting, the closets  
There's a ghost in my brain  
-Let Me Down Easy

Tony dreams he’s lying down on his side in bed, sinking into the soft mattress, eyes wide open and staring straight in front of him. The door creaks open and lets in slanting yellow light. A wolf slinks in. It has black fur and claws that scrape across the floor and slit angry eyes, sharp white teeth and a rough pink tongue. It climbs up on the bed behind him. Tony can’t move. He is paralysed. He hears his own heart beat. The wolf moves over to him and lays down, it’s long savage warmth pressed against Tony’s back. It buries it’s muzzle into the back of Tony’s neck and hot, rancid breath washes over him. It pushes strong limbs over his torso and digs claws into Tony’s hip, and holds on tight, and goes to sleep.

Tony wakes up. The room is dark. The door is firmly shut. It’s not a wolf, it’s Obadiah. His arm is holding Tony close to his chest. Tony is surrounded. He is still paralysed. He is still staring straight in front of him, so much that his eyes ache and well. He can still hear his own heart. He can hear Obadiah’s heart, too, pulsing against his back, loud and strong and as angry as a wolf.

**00**

“A date,” Tony echoes when Steve asks. He’s taken to swallowing Xanax every day before school, so he’s a little less edgier, a little smoother, but it always makes him feel very far away and he can never really concentrate on anything. He tries to focus in on Steve, now. Blue eyes, firm compressed smile. Those eyes are like pieces of the sky, cut out and patchworked into Steve’s face.

“Well,” Steve says hastily. “Not a date, if you don’t want. Just some time for us. Just us.”

“That’s a date, Stevie,” Tony smiles slowly. “Call it a date.”

“Fine. I’m asking you on a date.” Steve blows out the words in a big sigh, like he’s exasperated, but he’s still smiling.

“...Alright,” Tony nods finally, as if he was ever going to say no. “Next Monday, then? After school?”

“Or tomorrow? Saturday?”

Tony raises eyebrows at him. “Eager, aren’t you?”

“Never. They’re just showing Star Wars reruns at the theatre downtown tomorrow, and I thought that might be something you like.”

“Just because I’m a science nerd? Don’t stereotype me,” Tony teases.

“No, I asked Natasha what films you’re into,” Steve blushes abashedly. Tony feels his heart swell.

“Nat doesn’t know what films I like.”

“I think she knows everything,” Steve corrects confidingly. Tony considers this then nods reluctant agreement, because it is true. Natasha does know everything. “Alright, so. It’s a date?” He says ‘date’ like it’s something precious, a diamond he’s holding on top of his tongue, there and then gone again.

“It’s a date,” Tony says, and kisses him hastily on the lips. A group of freshmen walking past whoop and shout at them to get a room, then the bell goes.

**00**

Under the bleachers. Smoking. Skipping English. Again. Tony and Nat and Clint have done this so many times it’s almost boring, but nothing will be more boring than class, watching the teacher drone on and on and knowing that they don’t care. It’s worse for Tony now because all the teachers stare at him with pity because they know he has a dead mom. Fuck off, he thinks at them savagely, and goes off to find Clint and Nat, and here they end up, as usual.

It’s a slow drizzling rain that isn’t enough to get wet or even to fall properly, just the type of rain that hangs in the air as if it’s dew, that spins and flutters and flurries. The three huddle under the sheltered area under the bleachers and share a smoke, that keeps going out, passing it round with numb fingers and breathing out through numb lips, whispering as if it’s secrets they’re sharing.

“A date? You?” Clint says dubiously. “How many people have you fucked since you moved here?”

“Five,” Tony says defensively, though it’s more like twenty. “And anyway, Steve’s different. You know he is.”

“Don’t break his heart, I like him,” Natasha says disapprovingly at him. “We’ve just become part of that group and you’re going to get us exiled.”

“Not true,” Tony yawns. “I’m not going to break his heart, you’ll see. I wouldn’t.”

They both laugh at him because Tony walks all over people’s hearts. It’s like once he sees them as a sexual person he can’t see them in any other way. Tony’s not the type of boy you fall in love with. He knows it, even if he doesn’t like it about himself. He just doesn’t know how to operate any other way.

**00**

Saturday rolls round, lazy and unassuming. Tony struggles out of bed at one in the afternoon—he and Clint and Nat were out til 5 in the morning, at a senior party were everyone had taken turns snorting cheap coke in thin long lines—and blindly makes his way to the shower. He’s halfway done when Obadiah bangs his fist against the door. “Tony! Your friend is here! Will you hurry up?”

“Shit,” Tony whispers into the hot spray. He hurries out and wraps a towel round his waist, brushes his teeth quickly, tousles his hair, and gets out of the bathroom. He leaves wet footprints behind him on the dark honey wood floor as he makes his way to the kitchen. Steve and Obadiah are seated at the counter, sipping at respective coffees. Steve is in a light blue shirt, Obadiah in slacks. They make an odd contrast. “Morning,” Tony says sheepishly. “Sorry I’m late, Steve. I’ll be ready in five.”

“Go ahead,” Steve says to him, eyes laughing. “And it’s not morning anymore, hate to break it to you.”

“Shut up,” Tony scowls, turning to go. There’s an uncomfortable prickling on his back and he chances a quick look back to see Steve looking at his bare upper half appreciatively, which actually just makes Tony feel good. The uncomfortable prickling is from Obadiah eyeing him in the exact same way. He ignores it and rushes out quickly to get changed.

They get out ten minutes later and start walking to the cinema, Tony’s hair still wet and his face red from the shower. Their fingers are tangled together, their hands swinging loosely between them. Steve had to come pick Tony up because the cinema they’re going to is not in any place Tony’s familiar with, so they had to go together. It takes half an hour to get there and Tony’s even trying not to drag his feet, but eventually they have to run, because the first film has started and they need to get there before the ads are over. They rush in breathlessly, buy tickets, and tiptoe into the packed screening where the film has already started and everyone is dead quiet, watching Anakin Skywalker’s cold face in glorious HD.

 It’s all the Star Wars films in a row. Die hard fans have come from all over to fill up the cinema, crammed into every seat, clutching light sabres and wearing the latest Star Wars shirts. After the first film, Steve gets out to buy them popcorn and soda. They share both, sticky hands brushing against each other, so they look at each other and smile, faces lit up by the glow of the screen. Tony feels giddy and strange. God, he keeps thinking, I’m on a proper fucking date. A date! Him! Who’d have thought it? He hadn’t been on one since... well, ever. Ever.

They don’t make it through the last film. Tony has to leave for a quick smoke break, and Steve comes with him, and they start making out in the wonderful mellow sunset, tasting of smoke and popcorn, and then they just don’t go back.

It feels like they’re in love. Stop it, Tony has to remind himself sternly, and pinch the inside of his wrist.

Steve takes him to an Italian place for dinner and they eat thin pizza heaped with mushrooms and sweet peppers and cheese, with sour wide glasses of red wine, and sugared cream filled pastries for dessert. It’s dim and candlelit. “This is the first date I’ve ever been on,” Tony finally admits.

Steve looks at him wide eyed, face made liquid by the candles. “Seriously? What, ever?”

“Yeah,” Tony says, shifting.

“That’s not true. Everyone’s always telling me how experienced you are.” Experienced is double edged, the layers of meaning clinging underneath it; Tony’s heard ‘slut’ in a hundred different ways by now. But Steve isn’t resentful, or judgemental, just factual, so Tony doesn’t mind.

“You don’t need to date to fuck someone,” Tony laughs.

“I guess,” Steve shrugs. “Well. Rate your first date. Give me a review.”

“Three and a half stars,” Tony says after deliberation.

“Only! Why?”

“I don’t have anything else to compare it to, how am I supposed to know how good it is?”

“That doesn’t make sense and you know it. Go on, give me the truth. I can handle it.”

“I don’t want your ego to get any bigger,” Tony smirks. He sips at the last of his wine.

“I don’t have an ego!” Steve says, offended.

“I know, you don’t.” Tony pauses. “Fine. Five stars. Out of five. Are you happy?”

“Very,” Steve grins. “I give you four and a half, by the way.”

“What? You can’t rate me, you were the one who asked me out.”

“I did anyway. Who has the bruised ego now?”

“Not so fast. Why did I lose the half, then?”

“You were late,” Steve grins, poking him. “And I had to drink coffee with your creepy godfather.”

“Fair enough,” Tony sighs. “My godfather isn’t creepy.” But Obadiah is, so he doesn’t press the defence that much. “I’ll make it up to you,” he promises Steve, who agrees to ask his mother if Tony can stay the night. Steve’s mom is delighted. They make their way back to Steve’s and watch more films until Steve’s mom goes to sleep, then they crawl into Steve’s bed and make out slowly, languidly. The stars are bright outside the window. Steve’s skin is burning. Tony runs his hands across Steve’s bare shoulders, the bunching muscles in his back, the flat panes of his chest, the bulge of his abs. Steve lifts Tony’s shirt off and mouths words into the hollow of Tony’s throat and along his collarbone, sucking and biting. His teeth catch on Tony’s skin. They sweat, slowly, languidly. When Steve comes, he throws his head back and bites off a moan. His neck is long and lovely in the moonlight. When Tony comes, there are starbursts behind his eyes, that flash and shiver and die quietly.

**00**

Sunday morning he and Steve have pancakes—courtesy of Steve’s mother, who very pointedly doesn’t remark on either of their swollen lips—and plan to stay the rest of the day together doing nothing much, but being alone. Tony texts Obadiah his plans and they laze about in Steve’s room for a while, yawning and sweet to each other, until Steve’s boss calls and tells him he’s required for an extra shift that day.

“Steve,” Tony moans. “Why the fuck do you even have a job? You’re a teenager. Quit. Enjoy your life.”

“Sorry, Tony,” Steve says remorsefully as he gets into his uniform. “Burgers tomorrow after school? Just us?”

“Already going with Clint and Natasha. You can tag along, I guess.”

“Well, only because you’re so enthusiastic about it,” Steve says, leaning forwards and pressing a chaste kiss on Tony’s lips. “Stay here as long as you like, my mom won’t mind. See you tomorrow!”

“Bye, babe,” Tony says miserably, watching Steve leave. He’s lost with himself now. He can’t be bothered to make plans with anyone else, so just decides to go home and maybe catch up on a little schoolwork.

Schoolwork? Voluntarily? God, Steve’s rubbing off on him. He’s pathetic.

Tony makes his way home anyway, deliberately lazy, sauntering along in the late morning quietness and enjoying the sweet tinge to the air. He decides to take the long way home and smokes delicately, precisely. His phone rings.

“Tonyy—it’s Clint!”

“I know who it is, I have caller ID just like everyone else,” Tony laughs with a roll of his eyes. “Are you seriously drunk at ten in the morning?”

Natasha takes the phone. “He’s still out of it from last night. I don’t know what’s wrong with him.”

“Fucking lightweight,” Tony agrees.

“Tell us!” Clint shouts, tinny and loud.

“Tell you what?” Tony asks, faking ignorance, but caves just as fast. “So... we skipped out of Star Wars early to... well, you know...”

“That’s my Tones! Getting with the hottest jock in the school, _yes Tony_!”

Tony grins foolishly. “I knew you’d be proud. He took me to dinner after. _And_ paid. How sappy is that?”

“And then...” Natasha prompts.

“That’s all,” Tony lies.

“Are you outside?” she asks suspiciously. “You are, I can hear traffic. You’re walking. Where?”

“Home,” Tony frowns as soon as he says it, realising he should’ve made something up.

“Home,” she echoes. “So you stayed the night at Steve’s. I suppose congratulations are in order.”

“Natasha,” Tony moans, frustrated with the way she knows everything.

“You got Steve Rogers to put out on the first date?” Clint says excitedly. Tony’s home now, just mounting the stairs to his floor. He fumbles for his key and adjusts his phone.

“Not put out, we didn’t have sex...”

“But?” Clint says excitedly.

“Well, close enough...”

Clint whoops and Natasha tells him to shut up, but giggles as she does it. Tony is absurdly happy. He gets the key in the lock, twists and shoulders open the door, fixated on the sounds of Clint and Natasha, Clint still foolish and tipsy, and Natasha not far from it, no matter how much she always pretends to be a heavyweight.

So when he finally looks up and realises who’s in the room it’s even more of a shock. Ice pumps through his veins and his heart stops. He can’t feel anything around the immense, striking fear that grips him. “I have to go,” he says shortly into the phone, trying not to let panic overwhelm him, and hangs up.

**00**

Howard is just how he remembered. Tony doesn’t know why he thought his father would have changed, but he did. Think that. Tony stares in shock, at those cool detached eyes, the cruel smirk that Tony shares, the dark greying hair, the weight of his muscle under his shirt. Obadiah stands up as Tony enters. Both have glasses of Scotch in front of them. For a moment, no one says a word, and the door swings shut behind Tony.

“Tony,” Obadiah says finally. “You’re home. I thought you were going to be out all day. Otherwise...”

He lets it trail off, the rest left unspoken. The, _otherwise, I wouldn’t have bought him home. I wouldn’t have made you see him again._

Tony can’t manage to speak. Howard eyes him dangerously then throws his head back and laughs. “Look at you! Like a cat caught in the headlights! You’re fucking pathetic. Don’t worry, boy, I didn’t come here for you—I don’t give a fuck about you.”

It’s like a blow to the stomach. Tony forgets to breathe. He can’t think. He’s so. Goddamn. Scared.

“Tony, do you want to go and wait in my room? We’ll be gone in half an hour,” Obadiah says gently, stepping slightly in front of Howard like he’s trying to hide Tony from his sight. It comforts Tony, slightly. He’ll be fine. He’s safe. Obie is here to protect him, just like he promised he would.

Tony nods mutely and skitters around the two men to the bedroom. Howard makes a false start towards him as he passes, lunges forwards savagely and only drawing back at the last second, and Tony flinches and falters off balance. Howard laughs at him raucously and doesn’t stop laughing even when Tony gets into the bedroom and slams the door shut.

He breaks.

He’s never had a panic attack overwhelm him so suddenly or viciously. He’s more scared of Howard then he’s ever been in his life. He thinks he’s grown soft, accustomed to this new way of life where people don’t hit him and instead actually care about him. So the re-emergence of his father, and all that he stands for, slams into Tony in a terrifying onslaught. His head is between his knees, his arms wrapped around himself and fingers digging into his ribs. He’s shaking. He’s struggling to breathe, gasping for air, but silently, aware he cannot make a sound, he cannot let them hear a second of weakness. Sobs grip his throat and shoulders. Fear hollows out his chest and send fire through his veins, lighting up his heart into a race, thump thump thump.

When it eventually subsides Howard and Obadiah are still outside, talking quietly together. Occasionally Howard laughs. Tony imagines him head thrown back, teeth showing. Tony shakily walks over to the bed and seats himself on the edge of it, gripping his knees and trying to fully calm himself down. They’ll leave soon. That’s what Obadiah said, right? Yeah. Yeah, okay. Fuck.

“Shall we get lunch out, then?” Obadiah finally asks, speaking purposely loud probably so Tony can hear. He perks up, listening intently.

“Sure,” Howard agrees, unbothered. “You go pull the car round. I’m just gonna finish my drink.”

Obadiah hesitates. Tony hears him thinking of ways to say no, but eventually he gives in. “Fine. I’ll be five minutes.”

Footsteps, and the front door shuts behind Obadiah with an audible click.

Fuck fuck fuck. Tony’s alone in an apartment with him. Why the fuck did he go to the bedroom? He should’ve gone to the bathroom and locked the door. Scratch that, he should’ve left as soon as he saw Howard. Just turned round and walked straight out the door. Why the fuck hadn’t he done that? He’d been frozen, unable to do anything but listen to Obadiah tell him to walk to the bedroom.

Fuck.

Howard finishes his drink and slams the glass down. Tony must miss something because he doesn’t hear footsteps, just the sudden opening of the door as Howard thunderously shoulders the bedroom door open. Tony has time enough to stand up before Howard’s onto him, hands around his neck, murder in his eyes. When Howard speaks he is cool and cold, while Tony struggles and chokes. “You arrogant brat,” he says calmly. “Who the fuck do you think you are, running away from me? Too good for me, huh? Huh?” He slams Tony’s head against the wall for emphasis. Tony claws at the hands choking him and moans as pain rushes inwards through the back of his skull.

“Stop,” Tony moans, and summons his strength. “Fuck off. Fuck you!” He spits. It lands on Howard’s eyebrow and drips down the left side of his face. They wait. Howard lets go of Tony to wipe his face. Tony inches away. Then Howard lunges towards him and slams him backwards into the wall. He shoves a knee into Tony’s stomach and leans his full weight into a forearm against Tony’s neck. Tony sees white. He sees black. He sees, for some reason, his mother, as a flickering luminous ghost at the edges of his vision, waving sadly goodbye. Howard punches him in the ribs, and something crunches, awfully. This is all in silence. They have no room for words anymore. Apart from the noises of their breathing, grunting, and flesh meeting flesh, there is no sound, and the air is full of viscous hatred.

Tony realizes that his wish to die, which he feels sometimes, lurking underneath his jugular, is about to be fulfilled. Simultaneously he realizes he doesn’t want to die. This is just like when Howard was kicking him over and over again and kicking him to death, and something savage and primitive in Tony forced him to get up, to run, to find a way to survive. Except this time there is nowhere to run.

It’s not that he has anything to live for in particular, because he doesn’t. It’s just that human instinct that reminds him, fiercely, that he is scared of death, and all the mysteries that lay beyond it. And that he wants to live, so badly it hurts, so badly it burns, but he can’t see a way out of this.

It seems like forever until Obadiah bursts in and Howard, somewhat abashedly, drops Tony into a bleeding whimpering heap on the floor. Tony by now has regressed totally into the boy he was a year ago, two years ago, completely terrified of his father.

“Goodbye, son,” someone says, he’s not sure who, and gently touches his hair. Both older men walk out and leave him. Tony crashes apart on the floorboards.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's tragically the end of the summer holidays. As sad as I am that we go back to school, at least I can quit the summer job that bored the fuck out of me. Updates will now become (more) sporadic.  
> As always, I love hearing from you, and it makes my day every single time.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony turns up on Clint's doorstop at four in the morning, buys Steve burgers, and ends disastrously.

_Take one last look then shut the door_  
_That's it there's nothing more_  
_The damage has been done_  
_We're moving on_  
_And I start to fade_  
_The memories erased_  
_Smoke fills my lungs_  
_You've already won_  
-Liberation

Monday morning. A hand touching the side of his face, softly. Tony wants to open his eyes and see Maria Stark, beautiful and young and alive, but it's just Obadiah. "I'm leaving early for a flight, I have a business meeting," Obadiah says. His voice is low and gravelly. It's three in the morning. Tony stares up at him. His guardian is misted in the slow morning light, covered in the gravel of the rising sun. His face is in profile. His smile looks cruel.

"Okay," Tony whispers. He watches as Obadiah buttons up his shirt and throws on a suit. Obadiah goes to the bedside table to pick up his watch and Tony reaches out to grasp his elbow, like a plaintive child. He asks almost silently, "Why did you leave me alone with Howard?” He suddenly has to gulp down something hard and desperate that fills his throat when he says his father’s name.

Obadiah watches him coolly and says, “It was a remainder, Tony. A reminder of how good you have it here.”

And then he leaves.

**00**

Tony stares in the bathroom mirror at himself through the haze of smoke and white fluorescent lighting. Now it’s half three in the morning, half an hour after Obadiah left. He’s shirtless and stoned. His eyes are reddened and bloated. All the bruises that had been on his face have faded to nothing overnight, although his neck is still black and swollen in finger shaped marks. The rest of the beating had been concentrated on his upper body, so the bruising is located at the bottom of his ribs and on his left shoulder and lower back. The skin where he has been punched seems to be sectioned off into separate continents with each colour coded according to pain levels. His ribs, for example, are a mottled purple, while his shoulder is a deep green at the centre but leaks out into pus yellow. When he cranes his head round to look at his back in the mirror, it is red like a sunset, with cracks of brown and violet.

It’s a good thing Howard has practice at aiming his punches at places of the body where clothes cover.

Tony hides the bruises on his neck with foundation then leaves to get outside. It’s too early for school, of course, but the apartment feels oppressive and choking. All he can hear is echoes of his own cries from yesterday as Howard beat him into a miserable pulp. He has a sudden longing to see his friends, who would never lay a hand on him, who are good and true and young. In Tony's stoned state he decides it is a good idea to go and see them right now, way too early in the morning, instead of waiting for school like a normal person.

So he starts walking to Clint's. Natasha's probably there, anyway. He finds the apartment and rings on the door. No one answers. He bangs the door hard with his fist, over and over. “Wake up!” Rings again. Starts knocking out Bohemian Rhapsody. Slams the knocker down. Rings the doorbell. “Wake up, lazy fuckers!”

Clint opens the door, wrapped in a blanket, eyes hooded, face shadowed. “Tony. Why the fuck are you here so early.”

Tony shrugs. “Felt like it. Let me in. I’m hungry.”

“You stink of weed,” Clint groans, sloping after him. “Why aren’t you asleep? I’m so mad at you right now. I can’t even express it. I’m so tired. I will kill you in about five hours.”

Natasha is sitting in the kitchen when they get there. She’s half asleep, dressed an oversized t-shirt and shorts, head on the counter. “I do not like you, Tony Stark,” she says with certainty. “Good friends aren’t awake at this time.”

“You two moan so much,” Tony says, unbothered. “I’m making pancakes. C’mon.”

“No, we are going back to bed,” Clint says, apparently having had enough, and drags Tony and Natasha by a wrist each to his room. Natasha falls back asleep easily on the mattress on the floor and Tony is thrown onto Clint’s bed. Clint climbs in next to him and covers them both in a blanket. “Now sleep, dickhead,” Clint whispers threateningly, close to Tony’s ear. Tony closes his eyes and sleeps.

**00**

Seven thirty a.m. The alarm rings. High pitched beeps. “Turn it off,” someone mutters, and someone else turns it off. “We need to wake up,” someone announces, and slowly everyone wakes up.

“Tony, you’re in my bed,” Clint says, staring at him. “It wasn’t a dream. Your obnoxious ass really did come here in the middle of the night to wake everyone up.”

“Sure,” Tony yawns, closing his eyes.

“No fucking way are you going back to sleep. You disturbed my sleep cycle. Do you know how important my sleep cycle is?”

“Clint, stop,” Natasha says quietly. “Something’s wrong with him.” She sits on the bed next to them. Tony stares, then sits up as well.

“Yeah, he’s stoned,” Clint grumbles. “Four in the fucking morning. What the actual fuck.”

“Tony?” Natasha asks. “What’s wrong with you?”

Tony smiles, wobbly and wrong footed. Tears burn at the back of his throat.

“Shit,” Clint says, seeing what Natasha sees: Tony, broken. “What happened? Did Obadiah kick you out?”

Tony shakes his head. He digs his fingernails into his hands so he won’t start crying. Natasha takes his hands and opens them, carefully, like she’s unwrapping a present.

“What, then? Did Steve break up with you?”

“No,” Tony says. “I’m stoned. Just. Stoned. Let’s go and eat. I’m fine.”

They don’t believe him. They drag him to the kitchen and watch him quietly. Tony is hyperventilating in their awareness, but shallowly, so they don’t notice. This was a bad idea, he remembers, too late. They eat the cereal dry because Clint’s out of milk. No. One. Talks.

They watch him all the way to school. Tony sobers up. His discomfort and pain is palpable in the back of his throat. He doesn’t know what to do. God, it hurts. Please make this stop. He succumbs to panic attacks and sits frozen and stiff in his seat, hands in fists under the desk, holding his breath and shutting hit eyes so no one will notice. They pass through him and then attack again, overwhelming and all consuming. He can’t catch a break. He is drowning. He can’t breathe.

**00**

Everyone meets in the canteen again and this time Tony is quiet, sitting at the edge of the table with his head down and picking slowly at his food. Bruce nudges him and asks, “How was your date?” with everyone else listening, but Tony mumbles something and looks away, so they learn to ignore him after that.

And Clint and Natasha are on the other side of the table, eyes dark, waiting for him to reveal his secrets.

Steve pulls up a chair next to him and grabs Tony’s hand. “Hey.”

“Hey,” Tony says, attempting a smile.

“You alright?”

“Yes. How are you?”

“I’m good. You seem sad, Tones. Did something happen?”

“No,” Tony shrugs. Breathe, he thinks to himself. Calm down. Unconsciously he squeezes Steve’s hand desperately, so the other boy looks down and then back up at Tony’s face, eyes wide in question.

“Um… did you change your mind about our date? Didn’t you enjoy it?”

“No. I mean, yes. I enjoyed it.” He is aware of how monotone he is, but enthusiasm is hard to inject. What is left of his stoned state has settled into something rotting and miserable.

“Are we still going for burgers after school?”

Tony sits up properly and faces Steve, with effort. “No. I’m feeling sick. Sorry. Maybe another time.”

“So it is me,” Steve says, obviously hurt. “Is it because of what we did last night? Did we… move too fast?”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Tony sighs caustically. “You’re the virgin here, not me.”

Steve flushes. “I’m not a virgin.”

“Whatever,” Tony sneers, picking up his bag and standing up. “Later.”

He stalks out.

**00**

Clint finds him smoking outside, because where else would he go? But Tony is hunched over and lost in his own head, so when Clint walks up behind him and lays a hand on his shoulder Tony turns in fright and jumps about a mile.

“Hey,” Clint says, hands up instantly and stepping back. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“You didn’t,” Tony snarls, flicking away his cigarette and moving away.

"Okay. Will you tell me what happened, Tony?"

“Nothing happened,” Tony says. “Why would it?”

“Why did you turn up at mine at four in the morning? Why did you just pick an argument with your boyfriend?”

“Not my boyfriend,” Tony mutters. “Didn’t pick an argument.”

Clint barrels on. “And how did you get so injured in one day?”

Tony flinches.

“I knew it! You are hurt! I knew you were moving weirdly. How bad is it?”

“It’s not,” Tony protests, but Clint is too fast for him and has Tony’s shirt pulled up before Tony can back away. Tony yanks the material back quickly. The damage is done.

“Je-sus,” Clint grits, wide eyed. “What the fuck. What the fuck, Tony.”

“I was mugged,” Tony lies helplessly, but it’s obvious even as he says it. He tries on anger again. “It’s none of your fucking business.”

“Fuck off is it my business. Do you remember a few weeks ago when you came in drunk with a bruised face? And you said it was a cupboard or some other bullshit? Yeah, I haven’t fucking forgotten. Who’s hitting you?”

“No one,” Tony grits.

“Well, it’s obvious who it is. Obadiah. Fuck! Fucking bastard! Fuck!” Clint screams, then goes storming off, then comes back a second later with his face dark and angry.

“It’s not Obadiah,” Tony says almost desperately. “Look, I promise you it’s not him. He wouldn’t lay a hand on me. I promise, alright?”

“Well who the fuck is it?” Clint roars.

Tony doesn’t answer.

“I swear to God, Tony…”

“My dad.”

“What?”

“My father. My amazing fucking father. Is that what you wanted to hear?”

“I…” Clint is helpless, and sits down. Tony sits down forlornly next to him. “I didn’t know. I thought he was dead, or gone, or something.”

“No,” Tony says. “He. Um. I lied about my mom. She died about a decade ago. I’ve been living with my dad ever since, and he has… a drinking problem. Which I’ve inherited,” Tony says that as a joke, but Clint doesn’t laugh. “That was in LA. And then he hit me a few too many times, so I ran away and came to New York to live with Obadiah, my godfather.”

“Right,” Clint breathes. “And what happened yesterday?”

“My dad came to visit Obadiah,” Tony says, smiling tersely. “And bumped into me.”

“Some bump.”

“Yeah, some bump.”

It sounds stupid and they both laugh at it foolishly.

“Why didn’t you tell us, Tones?”

Tony struggles for words. “I don’t want… I don’t want you two to pity me. You understand? I know you already worry about me. I don’t want your pity as well.”

“We wouldn’t do that,” Clint says honestly. “Don’t you know how friendship works?”

“Not particularly,” Tony shrugs.

“So we’ll show you,” Clint says, his eyes so wide Tony might fall all the way into them.

Natasha appears at the bottom of the bleachers and starts climbing up to Tony and Clint. They watch her, her red hair turning scarlet in the sun, her skin translucent, her coat flapping around her. She makes her way up and sits next to them. “You going to tell me what happened?” she asks. So Tony does. She asks calmly if Tony wants her to kill his father, and he says no, and she nods, and then she takes Tony’s and Clint’s hands and leads them to class, and they don’t mention it again.

**00**

It’s five in the afternoon, after school. Tony is walking along the street holding a huge paper bag. He finds the right door and makes his way up to it, hovering in front, taking a breath for certinaty, and then knocking.

It swings open almost immediately. Steve is shirtless and barefoot with a towel around his waist. Just finished soccer practice, Tony’s stalker brain reminds him. He stares at Tony uncertainly. “Can I come in?” Tony asks.

Steve hesitates, then backs away. “Sure.” Tony follows Steve to the living room, where Steve says, “Sit down, I just gotta get changed.”

Then he comes back damp but fully dressed, which is a little disappointing. Tony smiles at him and tries to make himself seem genuine. “Um. Steve. I’m sorry about earlier.”

“Right,” Steve says coolly.

“I know you’re not a virgin. Maddy already told me she slept with you. That was when I was asking around about you because I was madly in love with you and hadn’t talked to you yet.”

“Really?” Steve flushes.

“Um. Little bit. Anyway. That’s not the point. I was rude because I was in a bad mood, and I’m sorry. I bought you burgers to make up for it.”

Steve raises an eyebrow. Tony upends his huge paper bag, out of which spills six burgers wrapped in paper from the burger place down the road. “I didn’t know which one you wanted so I just got them all.”

“Tony,” Steve laughs incredulously. “Why did you get so many? There aren’t even that many types!”

“Sure there are. The cheeseburger is mine, then for you I got a plain burger, a cheeseburger, a chicken burger, a bean burger, and a fish burger.”

“Who even eats fish burgers?”

“Right? But I got it just in case. And so it makes this a proper romantic gesture, not just me buying you a burger.”

“Okay,” Steve says, sitting next to Tony and picking up a random burger. “Task accomplished. Proper romantic gesture. You win, and you have my forgiveness.”

Tony grins in victory. They start eating.

**00**

Obadiah’s business meeting takes him out of New York for three days. He comes back when Tony has managed to erase Howard out of his mind and get back on good terms with all his friends. Obadiah walks in while Tony is making dinner, standing by the stove and watching the water boil for his pasta.

“Tony!” Obadiah says. “I’m home. Miss me?”

“Lots,” Tony says drily, feeling a strange fear start up in his stomach. He turns the stove off and turns round. “Does this mean you’ll buy me a takeaway?”

“Anything you want, dear boy. And you can have as much champagne as you wish. We’re celebrating—I just got promoted.”

“Congratulations,” Tony smiles emptily, leaving quickly with the excuse of finding the number for the pizza place.

Obadiah doesn’t seem to notice his new wariness. In fact, Obadiah seems to have wiped Howard’s visit from his mind. It’s almost as if he never let the man in, and never let him beat up Tony, and never walked away from Tony lying bleeding and crying on the floor, and never came back to Tony in the same position hours later, and never hauled him back into bed, and turned off the lights. All of that has disappeared with the three days Obadiah has been away and his promotion and maybe the half a bottle of champagne he drank on the way here.

Relax, Tony tells himself viciously. It’s over.

Obadiah had taught Tony a lesson, to value what he has. So Tony will learn it. And he will move on. And Obadiah will not have to reenact the lesson. And everything will be fine.

They order in pizza and eat it in front of the television, falling into their old routine of watching films and eating, this time with a constant stream of champagne. As usual, Tony drinks more than he means to, and faster than Obadiah, and as usual, ends up drunk.

This time when Obadiah kisses him—it’s that warm dry sickening press of lips that sends Tony’s head spinning and his stomach churning—Tony has to remind himself that this is fine, this is normal, he is fine, don’t overreact, don’t fucking overreact. Obadiah leans back and smiles at him, then looms forwards and crushes himself harder against Tony, thick heavy arms encircling Tony’s loose torso and pulling him upright, a hand in Tony’s hair keeping him fixed in place, and fleshy lips opening, and a salty fat tongue pushing into Tony’s mouth, like the head of a snake. Tony sees in shades of blue and grey, with Obadiah splitting into two and reforming, all blurry around the edges. Tony can’t move very well. He’s so tired. He’s so heavy. 

Obadiah picks him up and carries him to the bed. He lays Tony down under the covers. Obadiah gets under the covers. He lies half on top of Tony. He kisses him again. He uses his thick strong fingers to open Tony’s jaw. He moves away from Tony’s mouth and kisses his forehead, his nose, his chin, then under his chin, then his neck, then his shoulder. Tony moans and tries to struggle, but he’s drunk and tired and heavy. “Stop,” Tony manages. “Stop.”

Obadiah rears away from him, as angry as a demon. Coldly, he says, “You’re such a fucking child sometimes, Tony.”

“I’m sorry,” Tony slurs, lying very still.

“What are you sorry for?”

“I don’t know. I’m sorry.”

“You’re sorry for being a brat.”

“I’m sorry for being a brat.”

“Good. Now go the fuck to sleep. God, this is the last time I treat you like an equal.” Obadiah rolls over onto the other side of the bed, facing away from Tony, and stays resolutely silent.

Tony tries reaching out to him. “No. Obie. I’m sorry. S-sorry. Please.”

But Obadiah doesn’t answer. The alcohol rushes through Tony and he gets more confused and more tired and more scared and heavy, heavier, so heavy that he falls away, and asleep.

 


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony gets sick, recovers. Steve and Tony become official. Plus, baths and blowjobs.

_Maybe I’ve been putting my heart out in the wrong way_  
And I’m bleeding  
I’m alright with it  
Darling I’m alright with it **  
-Bloodstain, Wrabel**

Tony is sick. He curls up on his side under two thick blankets, cold and shivery, a cough tearing out of his throat and nausea deep in his belly and a headache compressing his entire brain inwards. The room is dark and hot. Obadiah has bought him toast and a glass of water, neither of which he touches, cringing miserably into the mattress and coughing again, reflexive tears bouncing to his eyes.

“Do you want me to take the day off?” Obadiah asks for the fifth time. His concern is almost more than Tony can bear. It stands horribly in contrast to the concern of his own father, who routinely kicked Tony out when he’d caught a bad cold and Howard couldn’t stand the sound of his hacking cough.

“I’ll be fine,” Tony answers for the fifth time. He closes his burning eyes and feels Obadiah touch his forehead worriedly to check his temperature, just like a mother. If Tony focuses in on the moment, he can pretend that Obadiah only ever touches him like this, soberly and non-sexually and concernedly and parentally.

“You don’t have a fever. I think you’ll be alright just for the day. Call me if you need anything, alright?”

“Yessss,” Tony moans, thrusting his head in his pillow. “Please let me sleep.”

“Fine. I’m going.” Obadiah leaves but hesitates by the door. “You’re absolutely sure you don’t want me to stay?”

“Oh my god!” Tony tries to shout but it comes out as a rasp. Obadiah just laughs at him.

“I am definitely going. Goodbye.”

“Bye,” Tony says, and flops back into bed, and falls asleep.

00000

Tony wakes up confusedly to the sound of flapping wings. It is a slow moderate sound. Perhaps he has died and an angel is carrying him away. But no, he’s still in his bed. He feels the sweaty weight of his covers. He focuses and wakes up more. It is the sound of the pages of a book turning. He opens his eyes and stares at the ceiling. The room is still dark but there is a light at the end of his bed. He sits up slowly.

Steve is sitting on the edge, hunched over a book, with a lamp set up next to him. His gold hair is dim in the gloom, his lips soft and pursed, his eyes hooded.

“Steve?” Tony croaks. “What are you doing?”

“You’re up!” Steve smiles at him, the sudden change over his face coming like a sunrise. “I made soup!” He drops his book and disappears out the room before Tony can say anything else. After about five minutes he reappears again, carrying a bowl of soup which is steaming pleasantly.

“Thank you,” Tony says confusedly, moving slowly to sit up against the back of the bed. “How comes you’re here?”

“You phoned me this morning, idiot, remember?”

“I’m an invalid, don’t call me idiot,” Tony responds automatically. “Um. Yes. I remember. Calling and saying that I was sick and not coming in today. Where was the invitation to come round and watch me sleeping?”

“I wasn’t. I was reading.”

“No, you were watching me sleeping. It was a definite Edward Cullen move.”

“I am simultaneously disgusted you made that reference and ashamed that I understood it.”

“Likewise,” Tony grins abashedly.

“Well, like any good boyfriend, I decided to come round and make you soup and feed you drugs.”

“Drugs?” Tony perks up hopefully.

“Painkillers, Tony, oh my god. Do you want your soup?”

“Yes,” Tony says. Steve comes and sits next to him and places it on his lap. It is tomato soup, and smells delicious. “So you’re skipping school?”

“Yes, but I bought school work.”

“How very responsible. How did you get in?”

“Key under the doormat, I’ve seen you use it about twenty times. Are you going to eat your soup or not?”

“I’m waiting for you to feed me it.”

“You’re pathetic,” Steve laughs.

“Remember, invalid, no insulting,” Tony reminds.

Steve rolls his eyes fondly and picks up a spoonful of tomato soup, feeding it to Tony gingerly.

“Delicious,” Tony says, licking his lips. “Next.”

The next one dribbles down Tony’s chin. Tony glares until Steve concedes and wipes it off for him. “You have a cold, you’re not paralysed, you child,” Steve sighs. Tony doesn’t reply, just opens his mouth for more soup.

Steve gives up after another minute and Tony sulks for another five before realising the soup is going cold and resigns himself to having to exert effort. He puts the bowl down next to him and lies back down when he’s done, closing his eyes. He doesn’t mean to fall asleep again, but does.

000

“And then he came in and fed me soup!” Tony gushes, to a crowd of female admirers surrounding him in the canteen.

“That’s so cute!” they all squeal.

“Isn’t he just,” Tony grins, watching Steve blush.

“He forced me to feed him,” Steve grumbles, but the girls don’t care.

“You guys are so cute! Are you official yet?”

“Official? Official what?”

“Boyfriend and boyfriend!”

“Are we?” Tony turns to Steve and flutters his eyelashes.

“I don’t know, are we?” Steve asks, shrugging.

Tony turns to the girls. He has no idea who they are, but they’ve been following his and Steve’s relationship eagerly, and Steve hates their attention, so Tony does everything he can to get it. “He said he doesn’t know,” Tony says, heartbroken. “I think I’m going to cry.”

“Steve! Fix it!” the girls loudly whisper to Steve.

“I hate you, Tony,” Steve says. “Will you be my boyfriend?”

“Of course,” Tony grins, and kisses Steve dramatically. The girls all start screaming. Tony straddles Steve for better access and deepens the kiss. Steve is bright red and trying to push Tony off. All the rest of the canteen is shouting at them to get a room. When Tony thinks Steve’s been embarrassed enough, he relents and gets off. “Show’s over,” he says airily to the girls and drags Steve across the canteen back to their normal table, where they sit down with everyone else.

“Tony. I actually hate you.” Steve says, wrenching his hand out of Tony’s and starting in on his sandwich aggressively.

“We don’t,” Darcy chimes in. “I love seeing Stevie embarrassed. Repeat performances, please.”

“Can do,” Tony grins.

“Weren’t you sick yesterday?” Bruce asks. “So didn’t you just give all your germs to Steve?”

“You better feed _me_ soup if I get sick,” Steve grumbles.

“As if Tones can cook,” Clint laughs, punching Tony on the arm.

“Ow!” Tony says. “And I can cook!”

“Liar,” everyone says. They all tried making weed brownies last week, and Tony set a saucepan on fire. No one is quite sure how, because saucepans weren’t even involved.

“One time, and that was not to do with cooking, that was general clumsiness,” Tony protests.

 They all ignore him.

000

When Tony and Clint and Natasha go for their customary smoke break it comes up again, rearing an ugly head. Tony’s smoking and Natasha stares at the inside of his wrist. Old cigarette burns bloom red and crusted, only blushes against the comparative white of his skin. They are not noticeable unless you look closely. Natasha looks closely.

“Was that your dad?” she asks.

He doesn’t say anything, just breathes out. Something small and shameful burns hot in his chest.

“Hey,” says Clint. “It’s okay. We’re here.”

“What do you want?” Tony asks caustically. “Some sob story so we can bond over how shitty my childhood was?”

“Tell us whatever you want,” Clint says, uncharacteristically serious.

“Fine. It was Christmas. You know what I got for Christmas this year? It was a banner fuckin’ year at the old—“

“The Breakfast Club? Shut up, you dick,” Clint laughs, punching him in the arm.

“Yes, we get your point,” Natasha rolls her eyes. “Tony Stark is allergic to emotion.”

“And Natasha Romanoff is a bitch,” Tony counters maturely.

“And Clint Barton is the favourite in this friendship,” Clint says hopefully.

“No, Clint Barton is a brain dead moron,” Tony replies.

“And Clint Barton has a small dick,” Natasha tells them.

“Do you know that from experience?” Tony jokes, but no one laughs. He looks at the two of them aghast. “Wait, did you two… oh my god. When? Why? _How?_ ”

“It was a long time ago,” Natasha says, a smirk playing on her lips.

“Very long,” Clint agrees, blushing.

“Well, _it_ wasn’t very long,” Natasha grins, looking significantly down at Clint’s crotch.

“That’s not true!” Clint cries indignantly. “I’m a grower, alright, not a shower.”

“I’m both,” Tony winks.

“You can’t be both. They’re mutually exclusive,” Clint sulks.

“Clint used big words!” Tony and Natasha exclaim in unison, and reach over to ruffle Clint’s hair.

000

“So, Steve and I are official now,” Tony says around a mouthful of omelette. Obadiah has to leave in five minutes for work so this is a strategic time. Obadiah looks up from his black coffee, his eyes cool and unamused.

“Official,” he repeats slowly. “Lovely.”

“Well, you like him, right,” Tony tries to smile.

“I never said that,” Obadiah says shortly. “Didn’t you think to talk it over with me, your godfather, beforehand?”

His disapproval is claustrophobic.

“It’s not a big deal,” Tony says lightly. “It’s not like he proposed.”

“Right,” Obadiah says. He pauses and considers his next words. “Don’t you think I’m owed anything after all I’ve done for you?”

Tony gapes and flounders. “I—of course—I don’t—“

Obadiah looks at his watch and leaves for the door. Before he shuts it behind him, he looks over his shoulder and says coldly to Tony, “Just think on it.”

000

Tony sinks back into the hot bath with a sigh of relief. His muscles unwind, the knots melting gloriously in the heat. He has on soft music, dim lights and scented bubbles. He has ketamine in a plastic bag next to him, with a key lying on top. Every so often as stress starts to build in the back of his head, he picks out a little lump of powder, snorts it off the end of his key, and relaxes with his eyes closed as the peace takes over him.

Ketamine is so lovely. It is falling endlessly through soft downy clouds, or filled up with melting chocolate, or swimming lazily through honey.

Tony observes the stresses of his life from a far off and detached view point. Obadiah. The man is reduced to a cardboard cut out with a cartoonishly furious face, frozen in a moment. Why does Tony worry about him so much? He’s easily pleased, with a little bit of flirting, a little bit of touch. All Tony has to do is lie back and think about something else for a while. It’s not so hard. Howard, too, is reduced and reduced and reduced, into a speck of dust, into something not worth Tony’s attention. What does he care about someone who doesn’t want him? Plenty of people don’t want him, but plenty do, and all he has to do is focus on those.

Tony’s heat dissipates. He sits up out of the bath again, grabs his ketamine, lifts out a key, snorts. The drip starts at the back of his throat shortly after, foul tasting and gross. He’s almost out of ketamine. He’ll save the rest for another time, ride out this last half hour.

Oh. It’s a bit more than he meant to do. Tony slips under the water, overtaken by something else. It is more than he can comprehend. Suddenly he is plummeting, endlessly, through thick velvet syrupy darkness, mouth open in shock. He feels simultaneously the feeling of falling and the water pressing in on him. He sees simultaneously the ceiling tiles warped and distorted through the bathwater, and a blackness above him. It stops, and he is suspended.

He hangs within infinity.

\--And crashes awake, leaning forwards out of the bath, choking and gasping. He clutches himself as he coughs, his throat feeling like fire. He leans over the side of the bath tub and throws up everywhere. A pool of watery bile. There is still buzzing confusion in his head, trying to pull him back into that wonderful peace. The water is now lukewarm. He leans back and breathes, staring up, shuddering.

He doesn’t know how long he lies there. His skin goes wrinkled, the water cold. Obadiah comes home. Starts banging on the door. “Tony? You in there? Are you alright?” Tony is away, away, away. All he wants to do is go back to that darkness. Oh god. He’s never felt anything like it. He’s never wanted anything so much.

Obadiah opens the lock from the other side and comes in. “Why didn’t you answer?” he asks crossly. Tony ignores him. Obadiah is nothing but a phantom in the corner of his eye. He is not relevant. He can never, and could never, understand anything like the plane of existence that Tony has experienced.

Obadiah is staring at the bath water. Tony’s body is within. His skin is dark and rippling, clinging to his muscles and bones. Obadiah inches closer. Tony looks at him, then looks away. The plastic bag of ketamine is at the end of the bath, and Tony’s bile in a small pool on the floor. Obadiah is taking in Tony’s nakedness, so doesn’t notice. Tony doesn’t say a word. Fear penetrates his detachedness. Obadiah’s trousers have become tented. Tony stares. Obadiah leaves, abruptly.

000

Mr Coulson appears at the door of the classroom in French, first period. He gestures to Ms Warbton, the French teacher, who comes over. They converse in whispers as the class discreetly watches, then Ms Warbton points over at Tony’s group. “What does that guy do?” Tony asks Clint and Natasha curiously.

“Coulson? He’s the school therapist. Why do you think me and Tasha know him so well?”

“Because you’re both headcases?” Tony wrinkles his nose.

“Exactly!” Clint agrees, missing the insult. “But he’s not here for us. I have sessions on Tuesday, Tasha on Thursday.”

“Weren’t you supposed to start seeing him, Tony?” Natasha asks.

“Ugh, yeah, once a week,” Tony scowls. “I just ignored it every time someone told me about it and I thought it would go away.”

“Believe me, Coulson doesn’t go away,” Clint says drily. “And it’s worse when he finally catches up to you.”

On cue, Coulson strides over. “Barton, Romanoff,” he nods at the other two. They nod back. “Tony Stark,” Coulson then says, turning to Tony and smiling tightly. “Can I have a word?”

“Deranged?” Tony tries. Coulson’s face doesn’t even twitch. “Blasphemous? Quaternary?”

“Outside,” Coulson tells him, turning and striding outwards. Tony sighs in resignation and follows him out. The other two whisper good luck.

“To what do I owe the pleasure?” Tony asks, mustering a smile.

“You’ve been avoiding me. You have not attended one of the weekly sessions I’ve set up, that may I remind you, _you_ signed up for.”

“The principle signed me up,” Tony says empathetically. “Let me assure you, that was not a voluntary decision.”

“I know,” Coulson says, leaning back and regarding him dispassionately. “It was the same with Natasha and Clint. But your bad behaviour lead to the signing up, so effectively your decision.”

Tony scowls.

“Right. Come with me,” Coulson announces with finality.

“Now? I have French!”

“You should have considered that before you wasted my time for a month.”

“ _Fine,_ ” Tony sulks and follows Coulson to his office. It is small, warm and homely. Scenic pictures hang on the walls. Coulson’s desk is smooth and black. He sits opposite Tony, behind the desk, and pulls out a clipboard.

“Let’s arrange our sessions. What time is best for you?”

“I really don’t want to do this.”

“That’s not relevant. Choose a day, please.”

“Wednesday, I guess.” Tony sulks more.

“Alright. We’ll have an hour session now and then I’ll let you go to lunch. Does that sound good?”

“Positively fantastic.” Tony smiles hugely.

“No need for the sarcasm. Would you like to tell me a little about yourself?”

“You start.”

“I’ll start, then. You live with your godfather, Obadiah Stane. You used to live with your father in Los Angeles. Your mother died when you were younger. You have been expelled from numerous schools. At this school, you have not gone a week without a detention or complaint against you, have been up for expulsion a number of times, have been strongly suspected of being under the influence on numerous occasions—“

“I meant start with you,” Tony growls. “I mean you tell me a little bit about yourself. Alright?”

“I know perfectly well what you meant,” Coulson says, smiling blandly.

They stare at each other for half a minute. Tony eventually breaks, looking away and collapsing back into his chair. “I see why Nat and Clint hate you.”

“They don’t hate me at all,” Coulson says pleasantly. “Would you like to continue with your introduction, or should I?”

“I will,” Tony says hastily. “Fine. Fine. I like… science.”

“I know. Top of your class, even without trying.”

“I do try,” Tony smirks.

“You haven’t handed in a single piece of homework. Ever. All you do is sit at the back of your classroom and talk to Banner.”

“Have you _researched_ me?”

“I am good at what I do,” Coulson nods.

“That’s not being good, that’s creepy.”

“As you wish. What else would you like to talk about?”

“Nothing,” Tony drawls.

“What about why you moved to New York in the first place?”

“Time’s up,” Tony announces, standing abruptly.

“It’s been fifteen minutes,” Coulson says mildly.

“See you Wednesday, teach,” Tony throws over his shoulder, slamming the door behind him.

Tony storms along the corridor. It is empty, because everyone is still in lesson. He is all riled up but soon gets bored of the sound of his own footsteps echoing. He’s not going back to French. He decides to go outside to have a smoke. One step outside and he’s almost soaked; it’s raining miserably. He retreats inside. He texts Steve: _Meet me downstairs bathroom!!!_ It doesn’t sound urgent enough. _Urgent!!! Emergency!!! 911!!!!_

He makes his way to the downstairs bathroom, dragging his feet, hoists himself on the sink and waits there lazily. Steve only takes five minutes. He comes crashing into the bathroom and skids to a stop in front of Tony, his face red. “Are you alright?” he asks frantically.

“Of course, don’t be dramatic,” Tony says flippantly, jumping off the sink and grabbing Steve by the hand. They’re heading to the old sports cupboard that no one uses for anything except making out.

“What? Tony, I just left my class for that. I thought this was something important. I thought you were hurt, or something.”

“You need to learn to stop taking me so seriously,” Tony frowns. “Why would you think I was hurt?”

Steve yanks his hand out of Tony’s and stops in the middle of the corridor. He pulls out his phone and reads. “‘Urgent!!!’,” he quotes. “‘Emergency!!! 911!!!!’”

They’re at the sports cupboard anyway. Tony grabs Steve’s shirt and pulls him in, shutting it behind him. “Yeah, that rings a bell,” he nods, then shuts up Steve’s next objection with an open mouthed kiss. It’s wet and hot and messy. Then Steve leans back.

“I’m still mad at you,” Steve says sternly. Tony tries to kiss him again but he pushes him away. “Seriously, Tony, I’m still mad.” Tony doesn’t reply because he’s busy working his way down Steve’s neck, sucking the salt out his skin. “Tony,” Steve stutters, and Tony undoes the buttons of his shirt. “I’m really, really, really mad,” he tries to reiterate. Tony licks a line down his stomach and undoes Steve’s zipper with his teeth.

He leans back and looks up after that. “Steve. Did you see that? I did it with my _teeth._ ”

“Yes, and you can continue,” Steve grits.

“With my _teeth,_ Steve. Don’t you think that’s impressive?”

“Very impressive oh my god Tony.”

Steve’s half hard when Tony pulls down his boxers. Tony makes the blowjob long and drawn out, so by the end of it Steve is alternating between fisting his hands in Tony’s hair then letting go just as fast and apologising for being too rough. Tony rolls his eyes every time it happens and takes Steve deeper, so Steve makes this little choked off moan and fists his hands in Tony’s hair again.

After Tony’s done, he stands up and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “Still mad?” he asks, grinning wickedly.

“You made me skip reading Macbeth,” Steve says piteously. “I’m joking!” he says, holding his hands up before Tony punches him.

They tumble out of the cupboard just as Coulson passes. Coulson stares at the two of them for a second, before shaking his head and walking on quickly.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sex!

_And I’m wasted_  
You can taste it  
Don’t look at me that way  
‘Cause I’ll be hanging from a rope  
I will haunt you like a ghost  
- **Broadripple Is Burning**

Tony was fourteen when he died. It was an overdose on ketamine. He’d snorted one line too many, relishing the burn, going back for more. Everyone else there was young stupid and crazy. They’d collapsed on their backs in the garden and drawn shapes in the stars. Tony had listened to his heartbeat and slipped into a k-hole, his vision clouding at the edges, his muscles turning soupy and weak. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t even breathe, but he couldn’t find it in himself to care. Everything inside him had slowed, and slowed, and slowed.

And stopped.

The next thing he knew, he was waking up in a hospital bed, with everything painfully white and crisp. No one was there waiting for him to wake up. At this point his mom was dead and Howard was drunk and Obadiah in New York, and his friends were still at the party. So he just had to lie there until they let him go. With no visitors, and the knowledge that absolutely no one cared, and he was free in the worst sense of the word.

A nurse had kept him company for the time he was there. She’d took pity on him and used to bring him jelly and magazines. Who wouldn’t take pity? What he must have looked like, achingly skinny, a tube in his arm and covered in bruises and voice hoarse from having his stomach pumped and wide hollow eyed and weak and scared and lost and lonely with no parents and nothing else but an oversized hospital gown—and sure, it was his own fault, for snorting all that shit and nearly killing himself, whereas everyone else in the children’s ward had brain tumours and leukaemia and paralysed legs and all the rest of it—but—but—

He was only fourteen, for fuck’s sake.

Tony’s smoking weed out the window when he thinks about all this. He’s remembering all the times he ended up in hospital. The count is; twice for overdosing on drugs, once for alcohol poisoning, once for a fight, and fifteen times because Howard beat him so hard he pissed blood or fractured another rib.

His thoughts are running wild again. He can’t keep track of them. They go spiralling off in huge massive loops and all eventually degrade into self pity and misery. He thought weed would make it better but the mood he’s in, it’s just dragging him down.

Maybe he needs to see Steve. Steve always makes him happy. But no, Steve will notice there’s something wrong with him, something worse than usual, and he’ll start asking questions, and that won’t help anyone.

Tony throws away the joint disgustedly and decides to brush his teeth. He loses time and when he spits in the sink, it’s all toothpaste and blood. He’s brushed for so long his gums are raw and grazed. They sting when he washes them with water. He stares at himself in the mirror, red eyed and gaunt. Obadiah’s gonna notice. Does Tony care? Yes, but he can force himself not to. He sprays the bathroom with air freshener and pushes the window open wider. That’ll have to do. He can barely smell it anymore, but he’s not exactly in a good state to tell if it’s noticeable or not.

Obadiah’s not even in when he gets out of the bathroom. He shrugs and wanders to the kitchen. No food but vegetables, fruit and rice; Obadiah’s on a health kick. He grabs some cash and walks outside.

It’s a bad idea. The cars on the road all haunt him. He stares at the drivers and the people in the front seat and the kids with their faces pressed to the window in the backseat. He gets lost in the interior of each car, which he imagines to be hot and claustrophobic and full of their decaying flesh, and he feels at once the separate intensity of their emotions, and all their separate lives cloistered in their own tightly held bubbles, never touching his own. He aches for them. He is torn away with every car that passes. Everyone stares back at him, without exception. Or maybe he’s being paranoid. No, he’s not. They turn their heads and watch him. They mouth things to each other about him. The kids wave.

He gets to the corner shop, finally, and maybe that’s a bit better. The brightly coloured packets of food jump and spin. He’s not even hungry. He just wants to eat. He buys jumbo packs of chocolate bars and a frozen pizza.

“Tony?”

He turns. A girl. Pretty. Long hair, full lips. He recognises her.

“Oh my god, you’re so stoned right now,” she giggles. “Are you on your own? Where’s your friends?”

He shrugs. “Busy.”

“Oh, right. Well. I have to go home. I’m making lunch for my siblings,” she shows him her pasta, tomato sauce, tuna. “But I was wondering if you’d like to come round in a few days? Not a party like last time, but there’ll be a few of us. And you can bring Clint and Natasha.”

“Linda!” he suddenly exhales in recognition.

“Right,” she smiles at him strangely. “Forget my name or something?” then she barrels on as if he’d never said anything. “So, are you coming?”

He stares at her and blinks a few times.

“We’ll have a bit of this,” Linda says, then brings her hand to her nose and mimes snorting drugs off of it.

“Yeah, sure I’ll come,” he agrees.

“Great!” she sings. She kisses him quickly on the cheek then steps out of the shop door. Before it swings shut behind her, she says over her shoulder, “And don’t bring Steve.”

Tony wants to leave the shop as well—he’s been there way too long and is getting strange looks—but decides to buy orange juice for the way home. Then he gets out and starts walking. He’s less miserable now, as if the reappearance of Linda has reminded him of something important—he has friends, real friends. The sort of friends that don’t go away. That would visit him if he did ever overdose again. And if he has that, then why shouldn’t he be happy? He doesn’t really have anything to be sad about, if you add up all the bullshit and weigh it against the things he’s got to be grateful for. And Steve—he has Steve, somehow, beautiful kind Steve, with his eyes like pieces of the sky and the brilliance of how much he cares for Tony shining through.

Tony decides to walk to Steve’s. It’s a long walk but gives him time to sober up. Steve’s mom is probably home and he’s in her good books, so doesn’t want to ruin it. He takes the long way round to make doubly sure. By the time he’s there he’s almost completely with it, and knocks on the door purposefully.

Steve’s mom opens it. “Tony!” she says, and hugs him. Tony is surprised and has to work hard to not jerk back. It feels like one of his mom’s hugs. He suddenly misses her fiercely, and buries his head in Sarah’s shoulder. She even smells like her, of flour and flowers and vanilla. He is overcome by nostalgia. “Oh, Tony,” she says, seeming to understand, and hugs him harder.

Eventually she lets go and shuts the door behind him, leading him to the kitchen. She gives him hot chocolate. “You’re here for Steve, of course. He’ll be back from work in half an hour.”

“I didn’t realise, sorry,” Tony says shamefacedly.

“No, not at all. You’re welcome to wait. I’d love the company.”

“If you don’t mind…”

“No, of course not. Have you had lunch?”

He holds up his frozen pizza sheepishly. He never did go back home to cook it.

“Tony! I’m disappointed. You’re as unhealthy as Steve.”

“Guilty,” Tony admits, smiling crookedly. “So, no pizza?”

“No pizza. I’ll make you something. What would you like?”

“I don’t know, you choose.”

“An omelette?”

“Yeah, an omelette.”

So she starts cracking eggs and chopping tomatoes and grating cheese. She gives him an onion to dice, putting her hands over his to show him the way to hold the onion so he won’t cut his fingers. His eyes start watering almost immediately but he grits his teeth and keeps on chopping, staring at the onion resolutely as it gets blurrier.

“So, Tony, what do your parents do?”

“My parents? Uh… well, my dad is an engineer. And Obadiah, my guardian, who I’m living with, is a business man.”

“That’s wonderful. What would you like to do when you’re older?”

“An engineer,” Tony shrugs, though it’s mostly a lie; looking in the future he can’t really see past his eighteenth birthday.

“Ah, like father like son?”

“No,” Tony snaps, sharper than he means to. He flinches when he realises and goes back to his onion, making sure all the pieces are roughly the same size.

Sarah changes the subject smoothly. “Steve really likes you, you know. He’s never been like this about anyone before.”

Tony blushes. “Really?”

“Really,” she affirms, taking his onions and brushing them into a frying pan.

“I really like him too.”

“I know,” she smiles at him. “When Bucky came round he told me you were going to break my boy’s heart, but you wouldn’t do that, would you?”

“No,” Tony promises. Fucking Bucky. “I would never.”

“I know that too. Steve might not look it, but he’s got a soft heart. He gets that from me. We’re both too weak for our own good, especially it comes to troubled bad boys straight from teen movies.”

“I’m not a troubled bad boy,” Tony protests. Sarah pours the whisked egg into the pan and both watch it splutter and settle.

“Maybe not, but Steve’s father was,” Sarah smiles kindly at him. “He was a heavy drinker. He thought if he could forget about his problems for long enough, they’d go away. But that never works, does it?”

“I wouldn’t know,” Tony replies, trying to relax inside his own jittery skin. He glances at the door. “Is Steve due back yet?”

“Any minute now,” she hums. “Grab a plate from the top right cupboard. There’s ketchup on the side, if you want any.”

“Thanks,” Tony says. He hands her the plate. She flips the omelette, waits until the other side is cooked, then slides it on the plate and hands it back to him. He grins down at it. “Thank you!” he says again, going to sit down.

“Of course,” she says. “Tony.”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t hurt him. I’m serious.”

“I wouldn’t,” he frowns. “I told you, I wouldn’t.”

“Okay. I believe you. But he likes you an awful lot, more than he’s ever liked anyone, and more than you like him. So while you might not mean to hurt him, you could anyway. And I’m saying, don’t.”

Tony opens his mouth to reply when the door opens and Steve comes in, strolling into the apartment and singing, “Mom, I’m home!”

“You have a visitor, darling,” she returns, hugging him affectionately.

“Hey, Tony,” Steve grins crookedly. “I didn’t know you were coming round.”

“Neither did I. Your mom makes great omelette,” Tony says around a mouthful.

“Mom! You never make me lunch anymore!”

“You’re a big boy, you can cook for yourself,” his mother grins, ruffling his hair. “Alright, I’m going out. I’ll be back after dinner. Tony, sweetheart, you’re welcome to stay, but I don’t want you two getting up to anything you wouldn’t do if I was here.”

“You can trust us,” Steve says, collapsing into the chair next to Tony.

“Can she?” Tony grins, sliding a hand up Steve’s leg.

“Oh my god Tony. Yes, Mom, you can trust us.”

She frowns. “Please be safe. Steve, _please_ can I remind you that there are condoms in your top drawer.”

“Mom,” Steve groans, thudding his head on the table. Tony laughs madly. Sarah winks at him and leaves, locking the door behind him. “Sorry about that,” Steve says, raising his head again and looking at Tony.

“Not at all. It was worse before you got here. She gave me a speech about how I was gonna break your heart and how I shouldn’t. Implied heavily was, I’ll kill you if you do.”

“Really? Ah, don’t worry about it. She gives that speech to everyone I date.”

“She does?”

“No. She made it up just for you, because you’re scary.”

“I’m not scary,” Tony frowns, finishing his omelette.

“Tony. You smell of weed.”

“I don’t,” Tony grouses. “And you’re one to talk, you stink.”

“I just came back from work, what’s your excuse?”

Tony flounders.

“That’s what I thought,” Steve laughs. “I’m going for a shower. I’ll be back in a sec, alright?”

“I’ll join you,” Tony smirks lasciviously.

“You can if you want.”

Tony stares. Steve blushes. It spreads to his ears and below his collar. Tony finds he is inexplicably and suddenly turned on. “Alright,” he agrees, and follows Steve to the bathroom. They both face each other and grin nervously as they undress, throwing their clothes into a pile in the corner. Steve climbs into the shower and turns it on. Tony looks him up and down appreciatively, then steps in as well. It’s small and cramped so they have to stand very close together, the wall pressed against Tony’s back and his feet in between Steve’s.

“Hey there,” Steve says, looking at Tony through wet lashes. Water drips around his face, frames his smile.

“Hey yourself,” Tony says back, running his hands over Steve’s bare chest. “Ow. The water’s too hot.”

Steve turns it down and says, “You’re ruining the mood.”

“Ow. Steve. It’s too cold. What’s wrong with you?”

“For god’s sake. You do it!”

“Fine,” Tony says, shuffling round Steve to grab the temperature knob and adjust it accordingly. “That’s so much better.”

“It’s lukewarm. You’re too sensitive.”

“I’m not the one who’s too sensitive,” Tony grins, looking down at Steve’s hard on.

“That was your fault. You keep moving against me. It’s very distracting.”

“What, like this?” Tony asks, grasping Steve in one hand and pumping up and down roughly a few times, his hand wet and slippery. Steve gasps and braces himself against the wall. Tony moves in for an open mouthed kiss at the same time. Steve tries to reciprocate and kiss back, but moves forwards too fast and when Tony shifts to compensate, he over calculates and both thud against the shower door. It gives and they fall heavily onto the bathroom floor.

“Steve,” Tony groans, clutching his ribs. “That really fucking hurt. Why are you so heavy? Get off.”

“That wasn’t our best idea,” Steve says, getting off Tony and moving away. Tony struggles up and stands by the sink morosely.

“Wasn’t _your_ best idea.”

“Mine? You were the one who suggested we shower together!”

“I was joking! You made it serious!”

Steve just scowls and pulls Tony into his bedroom, pushing him onto the bed and climbing next to him. They kiss hungrily, soaked and naked, hands all over each other. “We’re getting the bed wet,” Tony complains.

“Do you care?”

“Nope,” Tony says, moving abruptly downwards and swallowing Steve’s dick in one smooth motion. He settles into a rhythm, bobbing his head up and down while Steve spasms and makes little inarticulate cries. He gets bored before Steve comes and moves back up to make out again. Steve rolls, arms either side of Tony’s head, looming over him. Tony wraps his legs around Steve and flips him over again. They fall off the bed but Tony lands on top. He sits up and grins at Steve, lying on the floor. “Condoms in the top drawer, right?”

Steve sits up on his elbows. “You sure?”

“Don’t be stupid. Do you want to?”

“Of course I do,” Steve grins. Tony goes through the drawer and finds the packet of condoms. He works on ripping one open.

“Steve, why are there action figures in your drawer?”

“I don’t know, from when I was younger.”

“But why are they still there? Do you still play with them?”

“Tony do we really have to talk about this now?”

“I guess not. Are you going to get onto the bed?”

They climb onto the bed and grin at each other foolishly, and lay down, and stare into each other’s eyes so it’s almost romantic, instead of just hot. It takes a while to get it right, but once they do it’s perfect, and they both come with groans. They lie there afterwards in a post-sex glow. Tony buries his head into Steve’s shoulder, and Steve wraps his arms around him. “That was really good,” Steve whispers into Tony’s ear.

“I know. I’m a sex god,” Tony whispers back.

“Do you ever stop being vain?”

“Steve, why do we keep having to go over this? I’m not vain, I’m truthful.”

“I wouldn’t go as far as _sex god._ ”

Tony punches him in the shoulder.

“That hurt.”

“It didn’t. Don’t be a pussy.”

“That’s sexist.”

“Shut up Steve,” Tony groans. “Can I sleep here?”

“Yup. You’re not borrowing my toothbrush.”

“My dick has been in your mouth but you don’t want to share a toothbrush?”

“Don’t be so crass.”

“Sorry, _mom._ ”

Steve doesn’t reply, then falls asleep. Tony stays up long enough to hear Steve’s mom come home. He tries to identify the emotion in his chest. He can’t, except to know it’s intense and burning. He falls asleep as well, in the warm circle of Steve’s arms. 


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> things get heavy as fuck.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warnings for this chapter being fucking miserable. Happy new year, hope this doesn't make you too depressed.

_And now I live alone at nineteen_ _  
Too much inside my head at nineteen  
At least they finally showed me  
Where I always belonged  
But you're not here_ **__  
-Insight**

It’s a week after Tony and Steve first have sex. Friday night rolls round again and Tony, Clint and Natasha decide to take acid, except it doesn’t really work and they’re all sitting around in the cold feeling bored and useless, so Tony decides to go home and just sleep it off.

And then—then on the way home, something warps, something snaps, and he is in another _world—_

And he makes it home, does he make it home? And he spends forever at the door, trying to get it open, shuddering, flat surfaces turning into patterns, huge kaleidoscopes that spin and whirl—that burst and pulse and bleed, and trickle over his skin—and then he’s on the bed, knees to his chest, trying to breathe, while the earth stops spinning and the sun explodes—

Then—

Then—

There is something high pitched and unpleasant in his ears, an awful buzzing, interminable and static—drilling through his skull, bubbling up in his head, stewing behind his eyes—

“Fuck!” Tony throws back his head and tries to breathe. The awfulness moves to his chest and becomes a heavy weight. It is crushing him. He can’t move. He tries to shift it off himself, tipping to the side, but it only wraps around his ribs and constricts. A terror wells within him. And bleeds through his bones. And trickles down his spine, insidious, visceral.

What’s wrong with me, Tony tries to think desperately, and each word in turn is swallowed up by the screaming and shouting and scratching inside his head, and each syllable pulled apart, until it is turned into nonsense, and magnified by the terror, and reverberated over and over again, until he cannot even think whatever it was he thought, or make sense of that panicked question, and can’t make sense of any of the _noise_ —and thinks again, desperately, what the fuck is wrong with me? And so: a cycle, a time loop, a circle. He needs to get out of here, out of his head, out of this place, where is there to run? How does he stand? What is he doing, what is he thinking, what’s _wrong with him?_

And stop.

Obadiah is standing next to him. How did he get there? When did he get there? Large stretches of Obadiah’s face are blurred out and other parts are in high resolution. The mouth is a strange, gaping, moving creature. Obadiah is saying, “Tony, Tony, Tony…” over and over again. No, there are words. There are other words. “Tony, what’s wrong, what’s wrong, what’s wrong…” or maybe that’s what Tony’s thinking.

Fuck! And he’s gone again, falling into static, the high pitched screaming, the scratching, the terribleness in his head, welling up, swelling, bloating, exploding… he’s dying, he’s dying! He’s trapped here, endlessly, ceaselessly…

Hands on his shoulders. Obadiah is shaking him. Shouting. “Wake up! Tony! Wake up!”

Tony sits up, pulls away. Rolls—and crashes onto the floor, and is on the floor, against it, pressing up to him, winded, the world spinning, the floor hard and aching, spasming around him, against him, the walls and ceiling opening up, the floorboards snapping towards him. Obadiah is there, by his head, how is he there? Tony can’t get away, he can never get away…

And then he is on his knees and gasping for breath and Obadiah’s hands are on his shoulders and he is speaking low and calm and smooth. “Tony. You’re okay. Keep breathing. You’re going to be okay. Focus on my voice. Calm down. Don’t try to speak. You’re fine. Keep breathing. You’re fine.”

No. Dread wells up inside him. He starts to cry. Obadiah takes him in his arms, holds him like a child. Tony shakes. It feels like the end of the world. It is the end of everything.

**0000**

Later Tony has calmed down, finally, and is more rational. He sits in bed. Obadiah sits next to him and tries to make him eat some dinner. Tony is numb, quiet, and pliable. He eats, but doesn’t taste. “How are you feeling?” Obadiah asks softly. Tony doesn’t respond. He feels tired and empty, as if the ordeal has taken everything out of him. “Tony. You need to tell me what happened.”

“It was a bad trip,” Tony says, around a swollen tongue. He closes his eyes and leans back.

“A bad trip? You took drugs?”

“Yes.”

“What drugs?”

He doesn’t reply.

“Tony. What drugs?” Obadiah is quiet, and dangerous.

“Acid,” Tony whispers.

“Acid? LSD? You’re taking hard drugs now? You know you can go to prison for that!”

Tony shrugs.

“What else have you done?”

Tony shrugs again, then closes his eyes and turns away. He feels sick.

Obadiah keeps prodding him, keeps asking, gets angrier. Tony just lies on his side and gets sicker. Obadiah’s voice gets louder. Tony empties out. His skin turns plastic, and everything else disappears. A hollow statue, he starts to melt. Obadiah pulls him up by his shoulders and screams into his face, but Tony is empty, so cannot hear. Tony detachedly watches Obadiah’s mouth moving, the flecks of spit, the rounded great yellow mounds of his teeth. He falls away. And away, and away.

Obadiah takes him in his arms and strokes him. He whispers things, but Tony still can’t hear. He runs his hands up Tony’s back, but Tony can’t feel, so he doesn’t care. He takes off Tony’s shirt and drops it next to the bed. He stares at Tony’s chest, stomach, hips, ribs. He winds his fingers in Tony’s hair and tilts his head back and kisses him; Tony is nothing against him, open, languid, unresisting. He lets go of Tony all at once and Tony collapses backwards into the bed, closes his eyes, thinks it’s over.

It’s not over. What happens next seems to be made of shadows, all in shades of black and grey, an entire world made out of fragments and flickers. Each shadow is made of oil and drips into ash and sticks to Tony’s skin and soaks through to his blood and fills him up with darkness, and horror, and terror, but in a faraway sort of way, because Tony still isn’t really there; where he is he doesn’t know, only that here things are muted, and distant, and don’t matter;

So when Obadiah unzips Tony’s jeans and pulls down his boxers, that doesn’t matter. And when he takes Tony’s dick into his mouth, and sucks, and gulps, and hums… that doesn’t matter either. Or the way it feels like _Steve…_ Or Obadiah’s hands on his hips, holding him down, and his head moving up and down. While Tony lays there… he isn’t really there, this isn’t really happening, it can’t be, but still he can’t deny the pleasure up his spine, into his bones… but it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter. He isn’t there. He’s gone.

And when Tony comes, with a shudder, tears leaking miserably out of the corners of his eyes:

Fuck! He screams. Get the fuck away from me, you creep! Fuck! Off!

Except he doesn’t do that, he doesn’t say anything, he doesn’t move, he doesn’t breathe, he doesn’t flinch, he doesn’t blink, he doesn’t stop, he just takes it, he lies there and takes it, and doesn’t move and takes it, and doesn’t breathe and takes it, and doesn’t make it stop and just fucking takes it, and lets it happen, and lets it erode him away, and pretends it doesn’t matter, and pretends it’s fine, and pretends—

Obadiah cradles him in his lap and says, “You’re a good boy, Tony.”

Tony whispers, “Why did you do that.”

Obadiah looks at him disapprovingly. “Because you wanted me to, Tony. You asked me to. You _begged_ me to. And then you enjoyed it. Didn’t you?”

Tony doesn’t move.

“Didn’t you?” Obadiah asks, a little harsher. “And it’s a good thing I’m alright with it, and gave you what you wanted, isn’t it? Because if I didn’t, then you might have to go back and live with your father. And you’d lose all your friends. And you’d just have Howard… and I don’t think he’d be as nice as me, pleasing all your twisted little desires…”

Confusion thrums through Tony, and he can’t think straight. Every time he thinks he knows what’s going on, it distorts again. Is it the acid? Hasn’t it worn off yet? Why can’t he think straight? Who’s right? Obadiah must be right, it all makes sense… but why does he feel like this, why is he feeling so sick, so desperate, so terrified…

And he wants to go back to that world of shadows, where everything was dark and faraway, where it didn’t really matter, because it wasn’t really happening…

Tony hears himself saying, “I’m sorry, you’re right,” and he can hear now, can’t he? He’s got it all back now. Why did he… how could he ask Obadiah to do something like that? He doesn’t remember, but he must have, Obadiah just said he did. He asked for—Fuck! He’s disgusting, perverted, fucked up—“I’m so sorry,” he says, again and again, once he realises what he’s done, and turns it into a litany of apologies, until he’s nearly chanting them, and shaking, and still crying…

Obadiah holds him still and calms him down and makes him breathe. “It’s fine. You didn’t make me, Tony. You just asked me to. And I said yes. It’s fine, you did nothing wrong. I forgive you.”

“Okay,” Tony breathes. Is this good? This is good, he’s forgiven. He’s okay.

“Do you know what you can do to make it up to me?”

“What?” Tony asks numbly.

Obadiah tells him.

So: here is Tony, on his knees. And here is Obadiah, leaning against the bed, fly undone, dick hard, hands wound into Tony’s hair. Obadiah pulls him forwards. Tony opens his mouth. He closes his eyes. Obadiah says, “Open your eyes.”

He opens his eyes.

It seems to take forever. It stretches… and stretches…

And Tony sobers up the longer it goes on. The fragmented pieces inside his head come together into something coherent. The smells and tastes and sounds and sights become ever more vivid, more realistic. What was shadows, and fragments of shadows, becomes a visceral detailed scene, with every inch examined and broadcasted into every aspect of Tony’s self; until he is invaded by it, and overcome by it, and ceases to exist in any way other than this, in any place other than here;

“You’re such a good boy,” Obadiah keeps saying, hands fisted in Tony’s hair. “You’re wonderful. You’re a good boy.”

He’s not rough with Tony. He doesn’t force him to take more or go deeper. At the end, he asks Tony if he doesn’t mind swallowing, and Tony doesn’t reply, and swallows. Then Obadiah takes him to bed and hugs him and strokes his hair. Tony is too worn out for terror, tears, guilt, anything. All he wants to do is go to sleep and get the nightmare over with.

Obadiah whispers, “I love you.”

Something inside Tony startles, something warm and small and protected. He looks up. “You do?”

“Of course I do,” Obadiah smiles. “Don’t ever doubt that. I love you.”

Tony is lightheaded and wondrous. When was the last time someone said they loved him? Not since—Mom, before she died. But now, now Obadiah does, even after everything Tony’s done.

Obadiah kisses him on the forehead, softly, and holds him until Tony falls asleep.

**000**

The next day Tony wakes up and is more tired than he’s ever known, muscles made of wet heavy concrete and heart beating slowly and dully. He yawns and shifts back into the warmth behind him, which responds by curling arms tight around him.

Oh, God.

Tony tries to think, tries to sort out what is happening. His memories from yesterday are all tangled together and mixed up with his dreams and hallucinations and assumptions, so he’s not entirely sure what was real and what wasn’t. What is the earliest thing he remembers? Taking acid with Clint and Natasha, but then he’d decided to just go home… and Obadiah wasn’t supposed to be home, it was supposed to be fine… and then there is a large space in which Tony doesn’t actually remember how he got home, or coming in, he only remembers being on the bed and losing every sense of himself and reality, and panicking, and the entirety of the world crashing into him, and the awareness of all the terror and filth and horror that had ever existed crushing in on Tony all at once, transforming him, overwhelming him…

And he remembers, very clearly, Obadiah’s head between his legs.

And he remembers being on his knees.

And he remembers Obadiah saying, “You asked for this, you _begged_ me for this…”

And he remembers thinking of Steve, staring up at the ceiling and seeing Steve’s face appear there, gleaming blue eyes first, then the slopes of his skin, then his smile, and the blond strands of hair, and the sun behind him, glowing, piercing, growing brighter, then crumbling away all of the sudden so all Tony is left with is himself, and Obadiah, and fear.

Obadiah whispers in his ear, “Tony, are you awake?”

Tony doesn’t trust his voice and nods, moving away from the older man and turning round to face him.

Obadiah smiles at him widely. “How are you feeling?”

“Fine,” Tony says hoarsely.

Obadiah sits up. He is shirtless. Tony cannot tear his eyes away from the curling black hair on Obadiah’s chest, or the heavy weight of muscle and fat under the skin, or his broad tanned shoulders. “I want you to know,” Obadiah says clearly. “I don’t blame you for anything that happened yesterday. I know you weren’t in your right mind, and otherwise you wouldn’t have asked me for—that.”

“What?” Tony asks, horrified, although he already knows, of course he knows.

“You asked me to do things for you, Tony,” Obadiah says, watching him. “And I felt I had to, with the state you were in. But like I said, I don’t want you to blame yourself for it. In fact, we can forget about it entirely. That boyfriend of yours never has to find out. How does that sound?”

Tony wants to cry, but is too tired. He sinks into the bed and pulls the sheets up to his chin and looks up at Obadiah mutely and miserably.

“However, I do want to talk to you about the drugs. That can’t ever happen again, Tony, do you understand? Drugs are _serious._ They can kill you. I understand if yesterday was a one off. It won’t ever happen again, will it?”

“No,” Tony says.

“Good,” Obadiah says, then looks at Tony and softens. He leans forwards and puts a hand on Tony’s face. “I’m just glad you’re alright.”

“Thank you,” Tony chokes. He tries not to move.

“I’m going to work. I’ll see you after. If you’re going out with your friends, don’t be too late home, please.”

“I won’t,” Tony says.

Obadiah showers, then gets changed. Tony stays in bed. Before Obadiah leaves, he calls, “I love you!” then shuts the door behind him.

Tony remembers the pleasure he felt at hearing ‘I love you’. He still feels it, he can’t help it. Oh, God. He can’t bear this. What is he supposed to do? How does he react?

Obadiah said—Obadiah said they could just forget about it.

Maybe—

Maybe he can just—

Forget.

**0000**

Except he can’t. The memories bite at him all day. He paces the apartment restlessly, tired but unable to sleep, hungry but too nauseous to eat, sad but he can’t cry, suicidal but he’s—

Too fucking scared.

Self loathing clings to him like a slime, drips around his skin, clogs up his lungs. He hates himself more than he could have believed possible. More than he’s hated anyone, ever. He wants to get out of his body, escape it, escape this grotesque flesh and skin and bone—and then he is crushed by the realisation that he is stuck with it, with himself, for the _rest of his life—_ and there is no getting away. Ever. He can never run. He will never be free. He can never escape.

And behind it all, are the memories—

If only he could just forget--

Forget, forget, forget he chants at himself, but he can chant it all he wants, it won’t work. Well, it doesn’t work. But then he sits down and he phones all the dealers he knows until he finds one close with a gram of coke. And then he goes to meet him and pick up the coke. And he brings it home. And cuts it all up into neat lines. And rolls a dollar bill and snorts them in turn. And then it starts working. Because now he can do whatever he want. If he wants to be happy, he has to only think of happiness and he’s full of it. If he wants to forget, he just has to box up the memories, store them in the back of his head, lock them up, and run away. And there; he’s forgotten. And here is another line of coke, and another, and slow down, and spin, and taste the air, and this is how it feels to be alive, and free, and young, and wonderful. And one more line, and isn’t it all so fucking beautiful?

Thor has a free house so is throwing a party that night. He’d invited their group round early for pre drinks and to help get the house ready. They’re supposed to go round at 5. People start calling Tony at 6 to see where he is. He remembers, then starts walking, and makes it there by half 6, still with coke left in his back pocket.

He makes his way to Thor’s house, which is more like a mansion, entering through the grandiose front gate and walking up the paved gardens to the front door, where he rings the bell and waits. His skin is on fire and he feels jittery and loose, so he keeps taking two or three steps backwards then forwards again, just so he can keep moving. Still he is balanced on that knife edge of pleasure, so even through the sharpness of it all, he can feel the jagged happiness sure and blooming inside of him, keeping a smile stretched on his face, his hands clenched.

Clint opens the door. “Tony!” he grins, and pulls him in. Tony feels a shockwave from where Clint touches him, and his skin keeps fizzing and bubbling from the contact. Clint’s leading him along somewhere and whispering at the same time, “How was the acid yesterday? You shouldn’t have gone home so early, man, a bit after you left me and Natasha became completely _fucked._ ”

“Yeah, it got to me too. That stuff was fucking strong,” Tony replies. Remembrance starts creeping up his throat and he swallows it down angrily.

“So you were alright? Obadiah didn’t catch you or anything?”

“Yeah. I was fine.”

Clint looks at him sideways as if sensing something in his tone or the shortness of the reply. But it’s too late to be interrogated, because then they’re in the living room. Everyone is sprawled around on the couches with drinks in their hands, all the girls with faces half full of make up, the guys shirtless and lazy, and everyone cheers when Clint and Tony enter, already tipsy or drunk. The cheering makes Tony’s skin catch fire and he wants to scream with how good he feels. He is. On top. Of the world.

Natasha kicks at his ankle as he passes in greeting. He grins back at her, then makes his way over to Steve who is sitting on the edge of a couch cradling a beer. “Hey, sexy,” he leers at Steve.

“Hey yourself,” Steve grins, putting his beer down and reaching out for Tony. Tony lets himself be pulled forwards, stumbling loosely into Steve and ending up half sitting on him. “Someone’s already drunk,” Steve laughs into his ear.

“Not drunk,” Tony hums, but doesn’t tell Steve what he’s really on because Steve might freak, which happens sometimes when Tony takes hard drugs, especially when it’s cocaine.

“How was your day?”

“Boring, how was yours?”

“I was thinking of you the whole time.”

“Good answer,” Tony grins, and rewards Steve with a kiss.

“Fuck off,” everyone groans at them when the kiss goes on too long, and Bucky throws a cushion in their direction.

“Fine,” Tony scowls, moving away and sitting down next to Steve instead of on top of him. He finds himself next to Bruce. “Bruce!” he cheers. “I miss you. I haven’t seen you in forever.”

“Since yesterday, Tony,” Bruce rolls his eyes.

“Exactly. Say you miss me too.”

“I miss you too.”

“Ahh, I love you, Bruce,” Tony grins foolishly.

Steve hears and jabs him in the ribs. “Hey. I’m right here.”

Tony turns and laughs at him. Then while he’s laughing, something dark and awful opens up inside of him. It takes his breath away. It is a black hole, an empty space. It _aches,_ in a grotesque terrible way. Tony stops laughing. He panics backwards. “Shit,” he says, and stumbles upwards.

“Tony?” Steve asks, frowning. “What’s wrong?”

“There’s something—” Tony gestures at his chest. “Fuck. There’s something wrong.”

Everyone has at this point fallen silent and the whole room is looking at him. Tony takes several steps backwards, then turns and leaves. “I’m going to the toilet,” he says, panicked, over his shoulder, and hopes no one follows him. He makes it out to the corridor and rushes along it, over thick red carpet and bumping against the ornate pictures hung up on the walls, and only makes it round the corner before he collapses to his knees and implodes.

Fuck, he thinks. Fuck, I’m dying. He claws at his throat and tries to make himself breathe, breathe more than the panicked short breaths that are making it out right now. His chest feels all strange and constricted. His head is pressurised and aching. Why is this happening? He’s done coke, he should be fine, he should be happy, why is he panicking? He needs more, that’s why. It’s wearing off and his sadness is burning through. With a shaking hand, he pulls out the coke and digs a little lump out with a key, snorts it, breathes, snorts again. Relax, he tells himself sternly. It’s over, you’re cured. Calm down. Relax. But as it kicks in, his panic only seems to get more intense, to heighten, and the awfulness just grows, and he still can’t breathe.

Then Clint’s there with his hand on Tony’s shoulder and he’s saying, “Breathe, Tony, c’mon,” but it sounds so much like Obadiah yesterday that Tony _can’t,_ that he just crumbles even more. Natasha is behind him, and puts her arms round him, and she at least feels different to Obadiah, and sounds different, is soft and smells sweet, and Tony turns and buries his head in her shoulder, and breathes. “Shh,” she whispers to him, carding her fingers through his hair. He falls into her.

“Are you okay?” she pulls away from him and asks him, holding his face with her hands. Clint is sitting next to them, cross legged and quiet.

“Yeah,” Tony says. “Just—took too much.”

“Coke?” Clint asks, picking up the bag that Tony has dropped and putting it into his own pocket. “That’s confiscated, then.”

“You mean you’re going to do it all instead,” Tony says, laughing a little.

“Don’t tell Tasha,” he grins.

Natasha’s looking steadily at Tony. “Is that it? You just took too much? But you’re okay now?”

“Yeah,” he shrugs, feeling brittle.

“And you’d tell us if anything was wrong?”

“I would. Look. I’m fine,” he says, and smiles, and shows them both the smile.

Steve comes round the corner and finds them. “Hey,” he says, surprised. “Tony. Are you alright?”

“Better now I’ve seen your face,” Tony grins, getting up and swinging his arms round Steve’s neck. He still hasn’t recovered; inside he is sad, and breathless, and in mourning. But he plasters happiness over himself, and if he acts it well enough he’ll make it through the night.

Steve lets it go, whatever’s obviously happening, and hugs him back.

“That’s our cue,” Clint says behind him, and pulls Natasha away.

“Hi,” Steve says once they’re alone, looking at Tony with wide gleaming eyes.

“Hi yourself,” Tony whispers back, and closes the gap between their lips.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's going to get worse, I promise.   
> I'd love to hear from you, drop a comment and tell me what you thought! Long heartfelt comments inspire me to write more so you get a chapter faster so... it's just a good idea all round.   
> Hope your 2018 is going well. Thanks for reading!


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony fucks up some more (as if it couldn't get worse). The world seems like it is ending but somehow, that doesn't matter.

 

 _To hide in the pale soft light_  
_And stay there until this night_  
_Feels like a memory_  
_That we are swimming in  
- **Pale Soft Light**_

Tony wakes up with a scream just inside his head. He rolls out of bed and huddles on the floor, getting the stickiness of the nightmare out from his skull.

“Tony?” it’s Steve’s yawning voice, coming from the bed. Tony can’t help the jump of relief that it isn’t Obadiah. “What are you doing?”

Tony crawls back into bed and moves into Steve’s arms. “I feel sick.”

“Yeah. Maybe that was the vodka shots Clint kept giving you that I told you not to do.”

“I don’t remember that,” Tony yawns. His head aches infinitely. “Where are we?”

“My house.”

“I don’t remember coming here.”

“Yeah, maybe that was the vodka shots Clint kept—“

“Alright, I get it,” Tony laughs. “Want to make me breakfast?”

“No, but I will, you insufferable person,” Steve groans, rising out of bed to head for the kitchen.

“Wait a sec,” Tony says, pulling Steve back and kissing him soundly. He collapses backwards and grins. “You can go now.”

“You’re so spoiled” Steve groans, rolling his eyes. He leaves anyway.

Tony watches him go then curls back onto his side. The remnants of the nightmare still cling to the back of his eyes, but are softened by Steve’s presence, and the easiness of their affection. Tony can still hear the screaming… but all he has to focus on now is Steve, and block out everything but Steve, and the happiness of being with Steve, and all the rest ebbs away.

Steve eventually comes back through with fried eggs and toast. Tony eats ravenously. Steve watches him for a little while, then falls asleep. Tony stares at him. Steve is asleep on his side, on hand open towards Tony, his lips slightly parted, his hair a mess. Tony goes into the kitchen quietly to clean up, then goes back in and falls asleep as well.

**0000**

They spend the day in bed. Steve puts on something on Netflix. Tony pulls up all the covers over him, curls up next to Steve and sleeps with his head on top of Steve’s chest, in a brooding cloistered warmth, feeling the loud slow thud of Steve’s heart, the give and take of his breath, the arm holding him loosely. The velvet darkness behind Tony’s eyes and carpeting up the sides of his skull is something almost comforting, safe; Tony wants to stay here forever.

Tony remembers when he was a child and he used to suffer long episodes of what they called dissociation. For weeks, even months at a time, he wasn’t able to engage in any meaningful way, and sometimes just wouldn’t talk at all. It would happen suddenly; one day he’d just be looking at the sky and he’d sort of lose himself. Everything inside of him—the stuff of his soul, his self—would falter and loosen, and dissipate, and evaporate upwards, and there. He’d lose it. And he’d be only full of this tangy listless emptiness, and would wander round in a haze, and nothing could get through to him. They sent him to therapists and gave him medication and tried different schools and different places and different friends, but nothing seemed to work, nothing got through to him; then slowly he’d revert back to normal. But the emptiness would sneak back up on him and the sombre, longing child would reappear. And there was nothing they could do.

And that was before Howard beat him, before Maria died. Before he even tried drink, drugs, sex. Tony was fucked up even from the beginning. He can’t really blame anyone but himself. There is something tangibly wrong with him, a flaw in his genes, something missing.

“Tony,” Steve says, and keeps trying to start conversations, shifting around and brushing his fingers through Tony’s hair, but Tony resolutely ignores him and pretends to stay asleep and he soon gives up.

Tony absorbs the warmth around him and focuses on it. It can last, if only he believes it hard enough. If only he could make time stop, and he would freeze it right here, and stay for the rest of eternity just living and breathing simply in his own darkness, surrounded by the heaviness of someone who loves him.

But he can’t lie to himself that well. This is never going to last. And it never was. He opens his eyes and smiles up at Steve. Crawls upwards and kisses him, close mouthed, slowly. Steve kisses back. Pushes off the covers. Arches up into him. Tony falls away, and sinks into his fingertips, spinning inside himself. They make out for longer and it becomes more heated and intense. Tony makes an effort to make the right sounds, the right movements, but can’t fake being turned on. Steve pulls back and looks at him questioningly. “Are you alright?”

Tony doesn’t reply, just smiles, tastes a short sour note, and moves downwards to give Steve a blowjob. Tears prick the back of his eyes as he continues. He can’t help it. Squeezes his eyes tight and tells himself not to be so pathetic. Steve breathes heavier, fists his hands by either side as if he’s having trouble keeping control. He comes with an aborted gasp, hips thrusting forwards.

They clean up. Tony brushes his teeth. They climb back into bed.

Steve touches the side of Tony’s face. “Seriously, are you alright?”

Tony feels like when he was a child again. It wasn’t that he forgot how to speak, it was that he couldn’t find the purpose behind it anymore. He seemed to just lose the inclination to find the words and form them and speak them. And now, again, he is at loss. He tries to muster a reply, something, anything, but just falls back into himself, and closes his eyes, and turns away.

“Tony. Tony,” Steve says, touching his shoulder. “Hey. What’s wrong? Talk to me, please.”

Tony turns back onto his back and stares listlessly at the ceiling. He wants to leave now, but Obadiah is at home. There is nowhere he can go. “Nothing,” he breathes, barely a whisper.

“There’s obviously something wrong. You’ve been sad all day. Even since before the party. Did something happen?”

Tony struggles around it; “I… we took acid, a couple days ago. It didn’t. Go so well.”

Steve stares at him and tries to understand. “You had a bad trip?”

“Yeah,” Tony says, voice catching around the word. “It was. Worse than bad.”

Steve hugs him. Tony huddles into it, doesn’t cry. “You want to talk about it?”

Tony breathes out, and out, and out. “I think…” he whispers. “There’s something wrong with me. Something really wrong. In my head, things just… don’t work right. There’s this—there’s this _thing,_ in the back of my head, and it just settles there, and watches me, and I’m just… I’m so fucking scared all the time, Steve. I’m really. Fucking. Scared.”

Steve holds him closer. Tony shudders.

“Sometimes,” Tony says. “Sometimes I empty out, and there’s nothing left in me at all. It’s so empty, so open… sometimes I think I’m going crazy, with all these things in my head, everything that’s just so wrong…”

And Steve holds him, and doesn’t move. And tells him it will be alright. But he doesn’t understand. He couldn’t understand. And Tony is dying.

 

**0000**

 

Obadiah doesn’t notice Tony when he gets home, on some important conference call and in the middle of a heated discussion. Once he finishes he’s visibly tired and tells Tony he’s going for bed and that there’s leftover Chinese in the kitchen. He shuts the bedroom door and Tony sits on the kitchen counter, dangling his legs over the edge and eating cold noodles with his fingers. He thinks about what he said to Steve and feels sick. He shouldn’t be saying things like that to Steve, heavy sick disturbing things. Steve doesn’t need to know any sooner how fucked up Tony is. He’ll find out eventually and then it will be over. Tony’s only bringing the expiration date of their relationship closer.

Eventually he goes to bed. He considers sleeping on the couch again but that would only make Obadiah angry. He goes to the bedroom and lies on the very edge of the bed with his back turned to Obadiah and stays very still.

Obadiah shuffles up to him and puts an arm around his chest. He kisses the back of Tony’s neck. His hand moves up to cup Tony’s jaw, then slowly touches his face. He fingers Tony’s lips, opens his mouth, puts his fingers into Tony’s mouth. Tony tastes salt and bitterness. Obadiah moves his hand back down, clutches Tony’s shirt like a child. The older man’s breathing slows and deepens. He falls asleep. Tony, on the edge of the bed, pressed up against Obadiah, unable to stop shivering, stares straight ahead into the darkness.

 

**0000**

Clint and Natasha know him far too well now and can sense instantly whenever something’s wrong. They unanimously agree to skip school the next day, joining a group of seniors also skipping, squashing into the back of their car and skidding around the city with everyone screaming at the top of their lungs for no reason and drinking vodka out of paper wrapped bottles. Tony, somehow, manages to relax into the fun. They drive to a river and climb out of the car and lay down their jackets and sunbathe in the lukewarm tentative heat.

The seniors are fun people. They’re all driven a little crazy by stress and pressure, and drink like fish, and alternate between telling the younger three that they need to be carefree and enjoy life or sitting them down and giving them lectures on how they need to start working now. There’s five of them, three boys and two girls. They get drunker and crazier and Tony is content to stay tipsy and just watch them and laugh at them, with Clint and Natasha either side of him similarly tipsy, and the breeze only faint, and the river quiet and empty, and the sky an eggshell pale and concaved and soft.

“We’re going swimming,” someone announced and tops and jeans are removed. It starts everyone in their underwear, dipping toes into the cool murky water, then skinny dipping is decided and underwear is left in a heap on the riverbank. The boys jump in and the girls wade out slowly. Clint shrugs and joins them, pulling off his jeans and socks and shoes and shirt, then running in and dive bombing into the river, yelling and splashing everyone.

Natasha looks to the side at Tony. “Don’t be boring, you’re coming in,” she says to him. Tony grins and shakes off the last of his sadness. “Of course I am,” he grins, strips quickly, then stands up naked and waits for her. The others in the river turn and whistle at him. Natasha undoes the buttons on her shirt, takes off her skirt, folds it. Takes off her shirt, folds it. Undoes the clasp on her bra, takes it off shoulder by shoulder, places it beside her. Then the rest of her underwear, and her socks. Her skin is white and smooth and cream all over. The sun is gold on her breasts, the dip of her collarbone, the flat pane of her stomach.

Tony stares.

“You’re fucking gorgeous,” he says in astonishment. She leans back and grins up at him, red hair glowing, teeth white, eyes gleaming. She stands up and walks into the river, everyone staring, wide eyed. Clint grabs her ankle as she gets to the edge and pulls her in, so she pushes his head underwater and doesn’t let him up for a full minute, and he thrashes and yells and Tony laughs so hard his stomach hurts, and Tony gets into the water and his heart stops at the cold, and he is full of exhilaration and vodka and love and youth and freedom, and he dives under and pulls and Clint and rescues him, then they both splash Natasha and swim away. She gets the seniors to join her and gang up on them, so Clint and Tony are splashing away drunkenly and racing up river in attempt to get away, with everyone else yelling and swimming on their heels, then the whole naked group of them turns a bend in the river and there’s a painting class happening on the river bank and all these serious faced art students look up and see them and their mouths drop, and everyone screams and they try to backpedal back down the river, but it’s harder the other way and everyone’s crashing into each other and still very drunk and trying to get away from the scandalized class and laughing themselves to tears and quickly forgetting how to swim and diving and tumbling over themselves and pulling at each other and choking on water until finally, finally they make it back to where the car is parked, where they all break open the rest of the vodka and drink more, and gather up their clothes and pile into the car still fully naked and drive away, sopping wet and drunk.

Sometime after they get pulled over by police. It’s two young guys who don’t seem to be taking their job very seriously and just laugh at them a lot, then make them get changed, so everyone does somewhat sheepishly. They are then allowed to climb back into the car and drive on again, trying to appear as sober as possible until they round the corner and start drinking again.

It’s somehow got to the evening by the time they make it to midtown. The seniors all have fake IDs so tell the other three regretfully that they are going clubbing and this is where they part ways. Clint, Natasha and Tony are dropped at a McDonalds, where they huddle in a corner, damp and making their way through forty chicken nuggets.

Tony grins hugely. “I love you guys,” he says, genuinely.

“I love you guys too,” Clint says, mouth full. He swallows and grins at them both like a fool.

Both turn on Natasha, who rolls her eyes and leans back and crosses her arms. “Say it, Nat,” Tony frowns. “Don’t be mean.”

“Say it,” Clint orders, mouth full again, and still drunk.

“Fine,” she says, unable to repress a smirk. “I love both of you. Well. I want to kill you less than I want to kill other people.”

“I’ll take it,” Tony shrugs.

Clint is on Tony’s phone. “Tony. Linda’s inviting us to hers. Let’s go.”

“That’s my phone,” Tony says, snatching it back. “So she’s not inviting us, she’s just inviting me, and I don’t want to go.”

“She specifically said bring me and Tasha, and I already replied and said we’re coming.”

“She’ll give us free drugs,” Natasha notes.

“But,” Tony says haltingly. “I sort of want to go see Steve.”

Natasha smiles at him. “You’re so in love. That’s adorable.”

“He won’t want to see you, you’re drunk on a school night,” Clint puts in. “Come. On. You’ll see him tomorrow. Let’s go!”

“Fine,” Tony shrugs. Because today he’s been feeling light and wondrous and is actually enjoying himself, and seeing things in bright technicolour, and he never wants this high to run out.

So they take a bus to Linda’s and turn up to her house with chicken nuggets and a little vodka. She has eyes only for Tony and pulls them all into the living room, which is thick with smoke and people laying around being lazy and high. Music pumps lowly out of the speakers in the corners of the room, brassy deep beats that reverberate through Tony’s flesh and teeth and eyeballs. He huddles on a sofa between Linda and Natasha, with Linda’s leg thrown over him and a hand on her arm. Natasha gives him a warning look. Tony shrugs back at her. What can he do?

Everyone’s mostly lying around and chatting shit with each other, some making out, some dancing. There’s not many people there. They’re all from the same school and know each other, even if not particularly well, and it’s a warm comfortable atmosphere. Someone turns up with a bag of ketamine and everyone puts in a few dollars, then they take turns cutting it up on the windowsill and snorting it.

Tony turns loose and hazy. Honey drizzles through his veins and soaks into his bones. He sits on the sofa again, leaning back and collapsing into the pillow, a wonderful light buzzing under his skin, under his lips. Natasha, when he looks at her, is blurred at the edges and beautiful. She talks to him softly and in slow motion. Clint falls asleep against his shoulder. Tony sings along to the music.

Linda drags him into the kitchen to help her bring drinks back in. She tugs him over to the counter and slings arms around his neck and stands on her tiptoes and kisses him. She tastes wonderful. Her hair settles around her bare shoulders and she looks like an angel.

At about three in the morning, Clint wakes up and sobers up enough to walk, and he and Tony and Natasha leave, and make their way home. They’re stumbling through the dark slick streets with the sky achingly high above and dark and fragmented, and the streetlights tall thorny structures bleeding yellow, and the noise of the city muted and distant. Tony feels like he’s floating. It starts to rain, and rain falls into Tony’s eyes and down his face, and slips under his shirt, and he walks hand in hand with Natasha and Clint, and they hold onto each other and move cautiously onwards, as if they are lost at sea, as if they are the last people left alive, as if all they have is each other, as if this is the end of the world.


	13. Chapter 13

_The middle of the day_  
I hear you out  
I've never felt so hollow  
- **Sunlight**

Tony is walking barefoot through a field of snow. It aches audibly as he steps down. He leaves a trail of footprints. Ahead is white. Behind is white. The snow is a foot deep and silent. It flings down from a dead grey sky, swirling down and up and through. Snow melts into Tony’s skin and clings to his eyelashes and hair. His lips turn blue. His fingers and feet turn blue. He keeps walking. The snow gets heavier, and quieter. Nothing is alive but the restless haunting wind. The sun is a faraway solemn glow.

Tony wakes up. He is as quiet and as cold as if his dream was real. He can taste snow at the back of his throat and sees the spinning whirling patterns of white on his eyelids when he closes his eyes. He feels dangerously empty.

Obadiah wakes up. He says something, but Tony hears nothing but the wind. He runs his fingers over Tony’s burning ribs and up his brittle spine. He presses himself up against Tony, who turns on his side, away, and shuts his eyes. Obadiah starts moving against him, hands down the front of Tony’s sweatpants, and Tony slips away. Here he is again in the field of snow. It goes on forever. He spins, slowly, carefully, lonely beyond belief. The snow melts on his flesh, into his blood, cools his racing stubborn heart. Tony falls to his knees and lowers his head. The snow piles up to either side of him. It builds up to his shoulders, then covers him completely, sealing over his mouth and closed eyes and the top of his head. He ceases to be. He melts, completely, becoming one with the cool frigid embrace.  

**000**

Tony is not quite losing himself. Sometimes he finds that he is not in his body, but instead lurking dispassionately somewhere in the ceiling, and then he has to swim back to himself and pry his way back into his own flesh, slotting his limbs back in place, twisting and shifting until he is whole. But he manages it. And then he keeps himself tethered there, sticking himself to the insides of his skin.

A week after Linda’s party Steve suddenly starts acting strange. Tony is in one of his faraway moods and doesn’t notice when Steve doesn’t message him at all before school, or doesn’t sit next to him in Spanish, or when he sits on the other side of the table at break. Tony has a strange wistfulness building around his eyes and when Clint asks him in undertone what’s wrong with him and Steve, he brushes it off and wanders to the next lesson.

By lunch Tony has settled down again. He slides next to Steve, nudges him with his leg. “Steve? How was your lesson?”

Steve turns a cool face on him. “You want to talk to me now?”

“What?” Tony says, taken aback. “Is everything alright?”

“We need to talk,” Steve says lowly.

“Okay, go ahead,” Tony tells him.

“Not here. Away from everyone.”

“Okay.”

“After school.”

“Okay,” and now Tony is numb. He moves away from Steve and sits between Clint and Natasha. They give him sympathetic looks and take him outside to smoke. Tony tells them he thinks Steve is going to break up with him. They tell him Steve’s not good enough for him anyway, but they’re lying, and they all know it.

**000**

Steve and Tony walk back to Steve’s after school. Tony is tense with anticipation and doesn’t speak the whole way. When they get in, Steve makes them hot chocolates and they carry them to his room. They sit on his bed together and then the closeness of each other and the warmth of the room turns into a make out session which turns into sex, slow and drizzly and light headed, on top of the sheets with the curtains open and the rain falling languidly and lopsidedly. Tony closes his eyes and pretends it will last forever.

After, Steve rolls away from him, sits up and says softly, “I wanted to talk.”

“Go ahead,” Tony replies, loose but nervous.

“No, but… I was supposed to be upset with you. And now that’s sort of not working because you’re just too wonderful and I like you too much.”

“Okay,” Tony nods, and can’t help laughing, warmth blooming in his chest.

“Stop that,” Steve says, trying not to smile back. “I really am annoyed at you. Be serious.”

“I will,” Tony says, sitting up and putting a serious face on.  He finds his shirt and pulls it over his head. “Look, I put my shirt back on. That’s how serious I am.”

“Thank you,” Steve rolls his eyes. “Okay. Um. This morning, before school. Someone told me you kissed Linda.”

“Oh,” Tony says. It feels like a jolt. He remembers back to that night, about how kissing her felt, how she was all soft and pretty and fading at the edges. He’d forgotten it completely. Now guilt curdles in his stomach. “Yeah. That.”

“So it’s true?”

Tony nods and something in Steve seems to falter. “I’m sorry,” Tony says, and tries to explain. “I was high, she was high… I wasn’t thinking. And I’d forgot about it, or I would have told you. I’m sorry.”

Steve pauses and concentrates. “It was just a kiss?”

“Yes,” Tony promises. He decides to neglect to mention that he and Linda have fucked before. Steve doesn’t really need to know. “I’m… I’m sorry. I’m just. I’ve never been in a relationship before. I’m not used to thinking about things like that. That’s not an excuse. I’m sorry. What do you want me to do?”

“Nothing,” Steve says, looking up at him. “I’m trying really hard to be upset but it’s still not working. I. Like you too much.”

Tony feels his face break out into a smile. “I think I like you too much as well.”

Steve says, “I guess we didn’t make it clear before. We’ve never actually talked about it. But, from now… can we be exclusive? No one else. Is that okay?”

Tony stares at him. “Yes,” he says slowly, tasting the words. They are made of congealing honey, a shade off of honest. “I promise.”

“Okay,” Steve whispers. He comes closer to Tony. “Thank you.”

Tony tries to smile and says, “I thought you were going to break up with me.”

“Did you?” Steve touches his face. “Don’t think that. I won’t. I told you. I like you too much. I want to be with you for—for a while, yet. We still have time to go. Don’t we?”

Do they? Tony doesn’t know. Sometimes it feels like he’s intentionally trying to destroy himself, and that his relationship with Steve is something so good that he’ll never let himself keep it up, and the deadline is coming in all too fast. But he can make it last. He just has to mould himself into this person that Steve wants him to be, and he’s doing that. It’s a matter of will.

“Yeah,” he tells Steve. “Yeah, we do.”

**000**

At home Obadiah is waiting with his shirt undone and his shoes kicked off, lying back with his feet up. “You’re home,” he smiles widely at Tony, pads over to him, takes his face in both hands and kisses him on the lips. He leads Tony into the bedroom. He sits him down and starts to touch him. A blankness rises inside of Tony. It starts to overwhelm him. He finds himself escaping his body, rising up. Obadiah is a heavy, dangerous, threatening creature, looming over him.

With effort, Tony comes back to himself. He yanks himself away. “Wait,” he says, voice cracking, hands shaking. “Stop.”

“Tony?” Obadiah’s voice is curious, his hands up. The warning is an undertone.

“I. Just. I need to talk to you,” Tony says, feeling lightheaded and lost.

Something in Obadiah shutters, his face going cold and still. He sits down on the bed next to Tony. “Yes?”

Tony wants to brush it off and escape the tension by letting Obadiah doing what he wants, but Steve is a silent blooming warmth inside his chest, and he draws strength from it. “I… Steve, my boyfriend. We had a talk today and we agreed to be monogamous. So, I can’t—we can’t do this. Anymore. I’m sorry.”

Obadiah is very still. “Are you joking?”

“No, I—” Tony stutters. “I’m sorry, it’s not that I’m not grateful, you’ve done everything for me. I know how lucky I am. I know how you’ve—been so kind, and done so much, and given me more than anything I deserve, but it’s just this one thing. This one thing that I just need. Please.”

Obadiah watches him. His eyes are very dark. The atmosphere in the room thickens and stews and Obadiah doesn’t say anything. Until, finally, measured; “You know you were the one who started this all? You are a slut.”

It takes Tony’s breath away. “What did you say?”

“You’re a slut,” Obadiah tells him coldly. “You use your body to get people’s affections because you’ve been so starved of it your whole life. You realise that no one likes you and you know that sex is the only way you’re going to get them to stick around. You’ve been whoring yourself around but now your boyfriend doesn’t want to share, and you think you can just keep everyone else going, is that right?”

“I—I don’t—I—“

“I thought you were better than this, Anthony,” Obadiah says with disappointment.

Tony chokes. “Are you kicking me out?”

Obadiah doesn’t say anything again, for a long time. Panic makes black spots eat into Tony’s vision. There is no room in his head around the sudden fear, and regret. “No,” Obadiah says finally. “You’re still my godson, and you can still live here. Have your fun with your boyfriend. Once he gets bored of you will come crawling back to me again, and I will forgive you. Until then, do not touch me. And you can go and sleep on the couch.”

Tony stumbles up. He feels horribly sick. Why is he feeling so bad, as if he’s been the one rejected? This is what he wanted, he tries to remind himself. This is what he _wants._ He’s never wanted Obadiah, not consciously, and now they can go back to normal. There was always something wrong about it, Tony knew that. Obadiah is an adult. He goes to the couch and lies along it and buries his head in the cushion and cries. He feels like he’s grieving. What’s wrong with him? Why can he never, ever do the right thing?

He wants to phone Steve, or Clint, or Natasha, just to talk to them, just to hear their voices, but then it would all come out… everything that happened. And they wouldn’t understand, and they wouldn’t get that it was Tony’s fault, and now this is Tony’s fault, and he doesn’t know if he’s made the right decision, and he doesn’t understand how Obadiah is so cruel or why he is so angry, and he doesn’t know what to do…

He falls asleep, dreaming, over and over again, of that field of snow. This time he is not walking anymore and has already been buried under snow for years and years, perfectly frozen and preserved. Still the snow falls, and the dead white sun glows, and the wind screams, and nothing else is alive.

 

 


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony goes for a walk in the woods and then he (doesn't) talk to Coulson and then he gets clean and then it's his birthday.

_With you, love_  
Till the drugs are gone  
Then you'll move on  
Oh you, love  
Just a waltz up to the stars  
This lonely moon is ours

Tony skips school and spends a day walking through the woods. He has headphones on and listens to slow throbbing music and wanders through trees, crunching bluebells and dead leaves underfoot, looking up at eggshell poignant sky struck through with branches, breathing in the sweet cold air, hands out to brush through the roughness of bark and wet tangy leaves.

It feels like he’s in another world. Time ceases to be and Tony elapses in long warped strains. The atoms around him become luminous and more solid, so it feels like he’s moving through honey. Swimming through it. Breathing it. It fills his lungs, trickles down the hollows of his bones.

Deeper into the woods, the trees get taller and closer together, and he slides his way through them, face turned upwards searching for—something—and the music keeps on going, and filling his skull all the way up to the brim. His lips are very dry and cracked and he licks them periodically and blinks and strides on. His fingers are dissolving from contact with trees. Every time he touches one he loses part of himself and he is leaving behind those parts of himself in a trail.

Tony is also very high. He’s snorted ketamine an innumerable amount of times and now is floating on it. He took a bar of Valium ten minutes ago and it’s starting to kick in, with everything becoming at once more detailed and blurry at the edges. He is floating away from himself in that way he loves so much, until there is his body down below weaving through the trees and here he is, drifting somewhere above, without care, without emotion, simply going along with anything, and nothing can touch him when he’s this high up, nothing but the sun, and there is the sun even further up and painfully white and pulsing, and the music is nothing now but a distant high strain, and there is the moon spinning away, falling apart, bitten in half and in half again, a tight lopsided shell, glinting while the sun glows immensely, and here is Tony held between them in a thrall, losing himself, falling apart forever…

He finally filters in back to his body and he is lying on the forest floor. He tastes soil. There is a spider directly in front of his eye. Tony blinks and watches it. It crawls towards him, swings onto his nose, patters up to his forehead. Tony, with effort, rolls over so he is on his back and staring up. The spider crawls into his hair. The sun is growing and covers almost the entire sky. There is no sound anymore, nothing at all.

Tony doesn’t know how long he stays there because time has ceased to be, but eventually it starts raining. At first he is not sure whether to believe in the rain because the sun is still enormous but when he blinks enough it resolves into a billion rippling clouds, and it is definitely raining. The ground either side of and underneath Tony convulses into mud. Tony staggers upright and then throws up. Mouthfuls of watery bile that burn coming up and drip from his chin. He wipes them away and opens his mouth to the rain and gulps it down even though there’s barely nothing to gulp, and then he finds a tree and sits under that, and throws up again, and holds his stomach and shuts his eyes.

At some point he thinks about going home. Or going anywhere, in fact, maybe even to school, or Steve’s house, or Clint’s house. But the thought of walls and the alien faces of people and their warbling voices and glassy eyes makes him sick again, especially against all this strange wonderful quiet beauty, which is clean and pure in a sharp way, a way that cuts through to Tony, right to his bone. So he doesn’t go anywhere.

**\---**

“Tony? Where are you?”

“Hmm?” Tony answers into the phone. It is midnight. He’s walking home. He’s just made it out of the woods. He’s soaked and covered in mud. He is incredibly tired.

“I said, where the fuck are you? I’ve been phoning you all day.”

Tony keeps forgetting who he’s talking to and fading away, and then the angry voice on the other side of the phone reminds him. He doesn’t know how long he’s been on the phone but he regrets answering and keeps wondering if he can hang up, but every time he tries the voice starts shouting at him again.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he tries, slurring slightly.

“Yes you fucking will see me tomorrow. I really need you to tell me where you are. Come on, Tony. Come on.”

Tony drops his phone. It slips out of his hand and smashes onto the road. He stares at it then keeps walking away from it.

It takes him forever to get home and he’s half asleep when he finally falls through his front door. Obadiah is awake and watching television. He looks at Tony. His face is dark in the room, his eyes glittering with a reddish reflected light. Tony stares back at him. Obadiah doesn’t say anything. There is a bottle clenched loosely in one of Obadiah’s hands. Tony traipses to the bathroom and showers numbly. When he gets out Obadiah has left the couch and gone to his office. Tony changes into sweatpants and falls into the couch and shuts his eyes. Obadiah has not said a single word to him since Tony asked if he could stop touching him. Not one single word. It is worse than even being ignored, because Obadiah spills out his utter disgust every time he sees Tony, in a wordless terrifying manner. But it’s alright, because at least he doesn’t touch Tony anymore, and Tony doesn’t have to touch him. Tony falls asleep.

**\--**

And it’s curious because in some ways Tony’s life has never been better. He has an amazing boyfriend. And friends who would do anything for him. And a guardian who doesn’t lay a hand on him and pays for whatever he needs and provides a roof over his head. And his schoolwork might not be going particularly well but he’s not failing anything. However. Despite all this Tony has never felt more sad, or more desperate. And getting high doesn’t even help anymore. Most of the time it just makes him worse.

Tony goes in the next day to school. Clint punches him in the stomach. Tony doubles over and forgets to breathe. “That’s for worrying me, you absolute fucking dickhead,” Clint says with cold furious eyes. “Do you even remember yesterday?” Tony remembers most of it. The clean sharp beauty of the woods and bags of ketamine disappearing. And short confused phone calls with the other person getting more and more panicked and Tony not answering any questions and saying things that didn’t make sense.

“Sorry,” Tony winces, with it all coming clearly into his head and making a picture that isn’t pleasant. He decides that he deserved the punch.

“Fucking right you’re sorry. No more drugs without me. Promise?”

“I promise,” Tony says. He doesn’t really like drugs anymore, anyway. They’ve stopped working as they used to. He and Clint shake hands on it, which means it’s a promise Tony can’t break.

Coulson comes up at that precise moment. Tony breathes out and rolls his eyes as Coulson grabs his arm and marches him to his office without a single word. Clint laughs at his back and shouts at him to have fun. Coulson slams the door behind Tony and sits him down in the chair in front of his desk and says angrily, “And maybe now you would like to explain to me why you’ve been avoiding me again?! We have definitely had this conversation before, and in fact it is the only conversation we’ve had before. You really think that’s acceptable, Stark?”

“Don’t call me that,” Tony says, shifting in his chair uncomfortably.

“Fine. Tony. Any explanation?”

“No,” Tony says, too drained to come up with more than that.

Coulson deflates and sits down. “Alright. Well. You’re here now. Can you please make an effort to come to these? You know how much of a pain in the ass it’s been trying and failing to find you every single week? So will you just come, just for the hour, once a week?”

“Fine,” Tony shrugs, looking down and not meeting Coulson’s eyes.

“Thank you,” Coulson says. He pauses. Tony looks up and Coulson is studying him intently, peeling away layers of skin and flesh and bone with his screwed up eyes. Tony frowns and angles himself away. “Are you not feeling well, Tony?”

“No, I’m feeling fine,” Tony says, but his voice comes out hoarse and tired and doesn’t really sound fine at all, and sounds sort of like he’s going to cry, and then Tony has to focus very hard so that he doesn’t start crying.

“If you say so. Okay. Well. We have an hour. What would you like to talk about?”

Tony doesn’t reply. He shuts his eyes.

“Or we could sit here in silence, for an hour.”

Tony shrugs without opening his eyes.

“You still have to come back here next week.”

But Coulson doesn’t say anything after that, and Tony doesn’t either, just sits there with his eyes closed. And Coulson sits there too, not moving at all, and probably staring at Tony. Trying to work something out. But there’s nothing he’s going to find out from staring. Tony doesn’t carry around his secrets on his skin anymore. There’s no bruises now. Coulson is too late to save him.

**\--**

One thing Tony does manage to do is to stop doing drugs. Hours pass, separately, soberly, and form days, and then a week. And then he’s a week sober. And it feels—good. For some reason. He misses being high, but high how he used to get, when it was fun, not high how he gets now; when everything is just overwhelming and desperately sad.

And the longer he spends sober, the better it gets. It never gets as good as being high, of course, but it gets better than the best sober has ever felt.

He tries to explain it to Steve, who tries to concentrate but obviously doesn’t understand. That’s alright. Tony doesn’t understand either. But he’ll hold onto this fragile happiness, for as long as it lasts.

They go out for dinner one night. Steve says awkwardly, “I was wondering what you’re doing in… two weekends time.”

Tony screws up his face. “I’m probably very busy. You know me. Lots of important obligations.”

“Right,” Steve barrels on. “My grandparents have this little cottage on the coast and maybe we could go and stay in it? I’ll pay for the tickets there.”

“Um,” Tony says. “I’d love to. What’s this for?”

“Your birthday, idiot.”

“Oh!” Tony says in surprise, because it’s true, in two days he’s going to be seventeen. “You remembered!”

“Of course I remembered. You forgot, didn’t you?”

“No,” Tony lies.

“And. I know we don’t do stuff like this, but it’s for our six month anniversary, as well.”

“Oh,” Tony says, and can’t stop himself from smiling. “That’s really sweet.”

“I know,” Steve flushes. “I’m a really sweet sort of guy.”

“I know you are,” Tony grins. “I want to blow you.”

He says it too loud and an older couple on the table next to them look over disapprovingly. Steve is embarrassed and drags Tony home and tells him he’s not taking him out in public anymore.

**\--**

Tony’s birthday is a school day. Steve goes to school. Tony, Clint and Natasha don’t. They spent the evening before planning the day and now they’re prepared. Clint provides the apartment. Natasha brings cake, cookies, popcorn, carrot sticks, fruit salad and a pasta bake. Tony brings pretzels and weed. They arrive at Clint’s apartment at school time so Tony and Natasha can pretend to their respective guardians that they’re going to school—not that Obadiah cares anymore—and then they all promptly fall asleep in the living room because it’s too early.

At around midday they all get up and have cake and sing happy birthday to Tony. Clint was supposed to have candles but forgot so instead they light matches and stick them in the cake and Tony closes his eyes and blows them out as fast as possible. He makes a wish. Then they eat the cake, the whole sickly chocolate mess of it, and feel adequately sick, and sit around, bloated, and argue about what to watch. They end up on a Friends marathon because everyone enjoys Friends. Then they smoke copious amounts of weed—Tony lets himself off his sobriety because it’s his birthday, plus he only promised Clint he wouldn’t do drugs alone, and this isn’t alone. And weed doesn’t count, anyway.

It is the happiest Tony has ever felt on a birthday. The happiest he’s felt, maybe, ever.

Tony is lying on the couch, his head on Natasha’s lap and his feet in Clint’s, watching the screen through a vague happy haze. On Friends, Ross and his girlfriend are going away for the weekend to her parent’s holiday house. Tony says, “Steve’s taking me away for a weekend, for my birthday.”

“Who’s paying for that?” Clint asks. “You’re both broke.”

“Steve has a job,” Tony says.

“It doesn’t pay that well. He probably saved ages for it. That’s adorable.”

“Isn’t it,” Tony says almost dreamily, staring at the ceiling with a grin on his face. Natasha flicks him on the forehead.

“He’s properly in love with you,” Clint notes.

“No, he isn’t,” Tony says. “He just likes me. And I just like him. That’s it.”

“That is definitely not just it. He’s in love with you, Tony. Don’t break his heart,” Natasha says.

“Yeah,” Clint jumps in. “Please don’t, because then we’d have to stop being friends with all of them, and even though they’re all weird and sort of losers I don’t want to stop being friends with them.”

“I’m not going to break his heart!” Tony protests.

“Promise?” Clint asks suspiciously.

“I promise,” Tony says, and now that’s two promises to Clint that he really can’t break.

“Second cake time,” Natasha says, jumping up and dislodging Tony from her lap.

“Second cake?” Tony asks in disbelief.

“Of course there’s a second cake,” Clint grins.

This one is red velvet. Tony blows out the matches again. With the help of more weed, they make their way successfully through the whole thing, and lie back on the couch again feeling inordinately pleased with themselves.

**\--**

By the time the others finally arrive they’re on cake number four (there are seven, because Tony is seventeen, and apparently that makes sense) and the weed has ran out and on the screen Rachel has had a baby and they’re arguing about which one of Friends they each resemble. Natasha is Monica, of course, and both Clint and Tony want to be Chandler. But the others arriving interrupts this. They all pile in to Clint’s tiny apartment; Steve and Bucky and Thor and Bruce and Darcy and Jane, and there’s not nearly enough space for them, especially for Thor who really counts as three people with the immensity of his body mass and extreme volume. It’s a team effort to finish of the remaining food and then they all spill out onto the street and walk around for something to do. A bus comes past so they all get on it and pile onto the seats and sing Tony happy birthday and sing ‘the wheels on the bus go round and round’ because they’re all children really. They go past a bowling place, so get out on the next stop and walk back to it.

They rent two lanes next to each other and everyone puts on bowling shoes and suddenly they all get really competitive. No one can bowl apart from Steve, Bucky, Natasha and Thor. Tony’s bowling balls keep going into the wrong lane and Clint’s keep going backwards, although that might be more to do with the weed than bowling ability. The competitiveness levels off because of how shit they all are and then they sit around with bottles of poorly disguised vodka, watching the four who can actually bowl face off with each other.

Steve gets a strike but then Tony celebrates by kissing him so hard that Steve is distracted for all the rest of his goes and misses them all. Clint tries to help Natasha win by plying Bucky and Thor with alcohol. Thor is soon drunk. Then it’s between Bucky and Natasha, and because it’s Natasha she’s winning by a mile, even when half stoned, but it’s incredibly tense for the last few goes and everyone is watching intently and screaming their lungs out every time Bucky or Natasha get a strike, which happens unfairly often, but then they all get kicked out before the two can finish the game.

They all go back to Thor’s house and drink more and eat more and pass out one by one in piles of blankets and pillows. Tony is the last to fall asleep. He looks around at their quiet faces and still bodies and limbs flung all over each other and listens to the soft sounds of their breathing. The room is small and full up with their warmth. Tony realises he hasn’t been sad the whole day, and in fact hasn’t even thought about being sad. He wonders if this is how everyone else feels every day. He wonders if he can feel this every day. He imagines a life where he doesn’t even think about being sad for days and days and days. Where happiness is his natural state. He falls asleep to a dream of that, to bowling with his friends over and over again, and all of them turning to him at the end of the game, and singing happy birthday, and their mouths and eyes opening up into gaping holes that spill out an intense white light until they’re glowing so brightly that Tony can’t look at them straight but he has to, he’s fixed on them, and their faces have dissolved into the brightness, and Tony is staring into the sun, and it grows and grows and grows until it swallows him up.


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Summer arrives, along with; the L-word, Tony fucking up in massive proportions, and the fact that Obadiah was never going to just let it go.

_So you jumped down from the cliff you climbed to_  
Into paradise that lay below you  
I could only stare  
And let my tears fall into the ocean

Summer comes along all at once. One day it’s rain and cold lungs and thick coats and stamping to keep warm outside, and bright crisp days and the whole sky white with cloud, then all of a sudden they wake up and it’s summer, just like that. It’s gloriously hot outside. The streets stew in it, crisping at the edges, people wallowing languidly through and turning red and brown and orange.

No one goes to school in this sort of weather, so they skip to go to the park and lie around sunbathing and smoking and sucking on ice lollies. The boys take off their shirts and the girls roll up their skirts, comparing tans. Tony lies with his head on Steve’s lap, smoking lazily, looking through oversized sunglasses at the fiercely burning sun.

Obadiah left for a business trip a few days ago. He didn’t even tell Tony, just left a short note taped to the kitchen counter. He’s away for a week. When Tony’s home he wanders round the empty apartment and lies in the middle of the double bed at night, limbs all splayed out, starfishing, staring at the ceiling and listening to his own breathing. Obadiah hasn’t talked to him in a month and now his absence is making it worse, is turning Tony’s head inside out and an empty blue. And it’s harder to stay sober when he’s alone so much. The heavy glass Scotch bottles, the half a gram of neatly wrapped weed, the single bar of Valium still left, the dregs of coke in a tiny plastic bag. Tony stares and stares and stares and hides in bed, focusing on the rise and fall of his chest, the inflation and deflate, the sound of his heart ticking away, achingly slow. He carries the coke around in his back pocket and it burns a hole through his skin.

Steve runs a hand through Tony’s hair. “What are you thinking about?” he asks, looking down at Tony, his blue eyes turned grey through the tint of the sunglasses.

“You,” Tony hums, letting out a mouthful of smoke, clearing his mind and focusing on happiness.

“What about me?”

“How you always interrupt me when I’m thinking.”

Steve gapes at him, mock indignant, and says crossly, “Watch me, I won’t speak to you for the rest of the day.”

“As if you could manage even thirty seconds,” Tony laughs. He shakes away all the last lingering thoughts of Obadiah, of emptiness, of drugs, and sits up and gives the rest of his cigarette to Natasha. “Thor, throw me an ice cream,” he calls over to Thor on the other side of the circle.

“Ice lolly,” Steve corrects as Thor throws Tony one.

“You lasted long not talking to me,” Tony says, flashing an obnoxious grin over his shoulder.

“Shut up,” Steve says, punching Tony on the shoulder, who moves so he’s just out of reach.

Tony unwraps his ice lolly and sucks on it lewdly, staring at Steve for a reaction. Steve doesn’t notice at first then rolls his eyes. “That’s not doing anything for me, you know. You have strawberry juice all over your chin.”

Tony wipes it away unabashedly. “Sure it wasn’t. You’re totally turned on.”

“Stop that,” Clint says disgustedly, screwing up his face at them. “Haven’t we talked about this before? Do you guys need a proper intervention?”

“You’re jealous,” Tony shoots back.

“Of who?” Clint asks.

“Steve, of course. You’re in love with me. Admit it.”

“You’re the last person in the world I’d be in a relationship with, Tones. No offence.”

“How is that not offensive?” Tony scowls.

“Because I said no offence. Are you deaf?”

“Stop being petty, both of you,” Natasha says, bored.

“You’re petty,” they both snarl at her. She flicks them on the forehead.

**\---**

And it drifts along like that. In the way that summers do, all languid and stretched out, full of moments of catching the sun in the corner of your eye and wincing from it and grinning at it and feeling it full on your back, and caught up in the rays and the way everything glows, glows and grows and bursts open.  

Tony has a few more meetings with Coulson where they sit in silence. Eventually it dissolves into small talk. They chat about the weather, about ice cream flavours, about the latest school drama. Coulson watches Tony carefully but Tony doesn’t let a thing slip. It’s an exercise in futility.

After the meetings, Steve always meets him and they go and do something. Wednesday is their official date day and the only one Natasha and Clint aren’t allowed to drag Tony away on. Most days they go out to eat, or go to Steve’s, but sometimes they go back to Tony’s. The apartment is usually empty and they creep around it and leave quickly.

Today they’re at Obadiah’s apartment again but Obadiah comes home early. Steve and Tony are cuddled on the sofa with takeaway pizza in front of them. Tony hears the door and slides away very slowly from Steve, heart stopping. Steve looks at him with a dent between his eyebrows. Tony gives a tight smile. Obadiah enters, locks the door behind him, wanders into the living room, sees Tony and Steve sitting there. He stares at Steve coldly. Looks straight through Tony. Turns around and walks out, to his office, slams the door.

“What was that about?” Steve asks in a whisper.

“We’re arguing right now. It’s no big deal,” Tony says, as if it isn’t.

“Alright,” Steve says, believing him so whole heartedly, like he always does. Tony wonders what he did to deserve that trust.

**\---**

And of course it was never going to end well, not any of it, not ever. Not for people like Tony.

It starts on Steve’s bed. A summer evening, with the sun bleeding red over the sky, with the black shapes of birds cutting sharp and breathtaking up in huge swirling flocks. They fly like that when a storm is coming. Tony is lying on Steve’s chest and looking out the window, and sees all this, sees the bloody sky and the frantic birds, and maybe he should’ve taken it as an omen. He should’ve been careful, after that, treaded on glass, not fumbled through and messed up everything.

The air is hazy and heady. Tastes of sweat and thickness. Lolls in gratuitous waves, overfull, over spilling. Tony and Steve are trapped in that lull, wrapped around each other half naked, in a post sex haze, sated and dreary and sleepy. Tony feels like he’s spilling out of his own skin, he’s so full up. All these warm smeary feelings dribbling out his pores, out from his veins, his marrow, his blood, leaking out and pooling and surrounding and dripping down.  He and Steve smile at each other and close their eyes and falter and their hearts pulse against each other and the room gets smaller and the air gets thicker and Tony spills out even more and everything dissolves, so faintly you might not even realise it.

Eventually Tony rolls off Steve and grabs a bottle of water from the side of the bed. He drinks, savouring the coolness, the clear taste of it. Hands it to Steve, who sits up and drinks too. “Thanks,” Steve says, his voice suddenly loud in the quietness.

And then he looks at Tony. Really looks at him. Tony feels a change, like electricity in the air. A thrum, a start. Steve’s eyes are the bluest things he’s ever seen. Steve stares at him, and something breaks in his face, something sudden and open. He tries to smile, a barest twist of it. “What?” says Tony, crawling forwards.

“Nothing,” Steve says, wrapping his arms round Tony and pulling him into his side. They lie down again.

Tony looks up and Steve is still staring at him, smiling widely now, his whole face taken up with it. He flushes when he sees Tony watching him but can’t stop smiling, just tries to duck his face into Tony’s chest. “Oh my God, what,” Tony says exasperatedly, shifting away. “Why are you smiling like that?”

“No reason,” Steve says.

“Then stop!” Tony says, half joking. Steve tries to, pushing the corners of his mouth down, and then he looks at Tony and smiles again, and notices and groans at himself, and covers his face with his hands. “Steve,” Tony says in a complaining tone.

“Um,” says Steve.

“Yeah?”

“Nothing, I didn’t say anything.”

“You were going to. I can read you too well. Steve. C’mon. Tell me.”

“You really want to know?” Steve asks, frowning up at him.

Tony pauses. Does he? A few possibilities run through his head, and then one real one, and he shrinks internally from it. He wants to say no, I don’t want to know. “Yeah. Go on.”

“I love you,” Steve says all in a rush.

All the headiness, the heaviness, the syrupy feelings, they all disappear. Crystallise and smash. Tony tenses up instantly. Ice rushes through him. Fuck, he thinks almost desperately. Love? He’s considered it, obviously, but not yet. No, he can’t do this yet. Fuck.

They’re just words, he tells himself firmly. Say them back.

“Do you really?”

Steve flushes and shifts away from Tony. “That wasn’t the response I was hoping for.”

There is a cold automatic smile on Tony’s face. “Sorry. Why do you?”

“I—don’t know,” Steve flounders. “I just do.”

Tony struggles upwards.

“Where are you going?”

“Bathroom. Sorry. Be back in a sec.”

He walks to the bathroom, picking up his shirt on the way, pulling it on. Gets into the bathroom and locks the door and stares at himself in the mirror, his hands clenched around the edges of the sink. He can’t exactly see why this is such a big deal to him. It shouldn’t be. Because they are just words. And love is just intensified fondness. And he’s definitely fond of Steve. Fuck, does he love him? Maybe he does. Something claws the back of Tony’s throat. He loves Steve? Does he?

But. Steve doesn’t love him. That’s the voice thundering on and on and on. He doesn’t love you. How can he? He doesn’t know Tony, not really. He doesn’t know about Howard, even. About Maria. About—Obadiah. About the things Tony’s done. About the blackness all inside him, all welling up, all grotesque and broken up. And if he did know—

But maybe he does love Tony, because they do have something real, something between them that’s like relationships in movies and books. That perfect connection where everything just _fits._ But. But. But.

But Tony’s a _liar._

Tony’s mind whirls to a standstill and he’s stuck. He feels around in his pockets. The crinkle in the back one, a baggie of coke, a little bit left. Coke always helps, always wipes his mind clear, helps him focus on the goal. He’ll know what to do. He pulls down one of the books on the bathroom shelf and sits on the edge of the toilet seat, cutting up the coke into two thin lines on top of the cover. Leans down and snorts. The rush is like no other, always. A clean sweep brushing out all the dirt and cobwebs and gargoyles in his head. Wiping it clear, turning everything up by a billion times, filling Tony’s veins with pure liquid silver. After so long without, it’s even stronger than Tony remembers.

Alright, Steve. Tony struggles and tries to resolve on the subject. Steve, Steve, Steve. Love. He loves him. Steve loves him. What should Tony do? I. Love. You. Too. It’s not so hard. He’s thinking about it too much. He does love Steve. Loves every part of him. His kindness, especially. The way his soul glows through his eyes. It’s almost too brilliant for Tony to look straight at. God. He’s beautiful.

And he’s too good for me, Tony realises. He is a hundred times too good.

And Tony—Tony’s dragging him down.

So. The bathroom is a few floors up but with the coke in his head, Tony can do anything. He opens the window as far as it goes and stands on the toilet seat and climbs out. He treads along the ledge, swings over to the next window, pulls himself along that, doesn’t look down. Gets to the fire escape, jumps down, lands with a clang. Races himself down the stairs. Walks all the way home.

**\--**

He gets home and sobers up partially, the wildness of the coke fleeing his head and plunging him into misery. Oh God. He’s ruined everything. He’s made of the worst mistakes of his whole life.

He stumbles numbly into the kitchen and makes himself a tea, drinking it with shaking hands. He stares down into it and sees Steve’s face reflected there, blinking and rippling and glazed over. God, he’s beautiful. God, Tony’s in love with him.

He’s in love. It hits Tony like a blow. He is in love, of course he is. Of course. A thousand times over he is. It’s so much more than just any one thing about Steve he loves; it’s all of him, something bigger than that, something bigger even than them. A current between them, stretching through the walls and streets and other sweating people. He would do anything for Steve. Anything at all.

Tony scrubs at his eyes furiously and tries to figure out how to solve it. Okay. Calm down. It’s not that bad. Not anywhere near that bad. All he did was run out, but Steve will understand when Tony explains, when Tony tells him he’s never felt like this before about anyone, and he just panicked. And he does love him too. Look, can you hear it in my voice? Look in my eyes, feel my hands. I love you, Steve. I love you so much.

He looks jerkily around for his phone but he hasn’t had it in ages; he lost it that one time high in the woods, and hasn’t replaced it since. He’s not sure quite how he’s been managing. He’s not managing now. He needs to talk to Steve, right this second.

“Tony?” asks Obadiah, standing across the room, uncharacteristically relaxed in a t shirt and sweatpants. His arms hang loosely by his sides. “Are you alright?”

Tony guesses his turmoil is showing on his face. It’s been wiped away by shock that Obadiah is finally speaking to him. Weeks and weeks of silence, broken just like that. “Yeah,” he says carefully, not wanting to disturb this new fragile beginning. “I’m fine. Thank you.”

“Good,” Obadiah says, smiling tersely at him. “No boyfriend troubles, then?”

Tony recalls the last sentences Obadiah said to him and feels a little sick. _You’re a slut. Come back to me when your boyfriend gets bored of you. It’s not going to last._ “No, no boyfriend troubles.”

“Right,” Obadiah steps firmly towards him. “This is getting ridiculous now. We’re both adults. We don’t need to act in this way.” Tony digs his fingers into his knees. He hasn’t been the one doing anything! “Why don’t we have dinner together?”

“Yeah, that’d be nice,” Tony says hoarsely. The doorbell rings at that moment and it’s the pizza guy. Obadiah goes to pay him and Tony watches, thinking only of how desperately he wants to run back to Steve’s and kiss him senseless. But it can wait until tomorrow. This is important.

Obadiah carries the pizza into the living room and they sit on the couch together with it on their knees. Tony’s customary chicken and pepper pizza is there, too. He picks at it and thinks Obadiah must have planned this. So, they’ve both been feeling the tension. It’s nice to finally get along with his guardian. He shifts up to Obadiah so their knees touch and smiles.

“Choose a film,” Obadiah tells him. “I’m going to get a drink. Fancy anything?”

“Just water, please,” Tony says distractedly, flicking through Netflix to see if there’s anything he wants to watch. He settles on a shitty remake of Dirty Dancing just because it’s the only thing he hasn’t seen. He chews on his pizza crusts and waits for Obadiah to come back. He just keeps returning, over and over again, to Steve’s face when he said I love you. And his smile as he looked at Tony. He really did. He really meant it.

Obadiah comes back with two glasses of wine. Tony tries to keep his face blank and takes it without comment. He wants to put it down next to him but Obadiah raises his glass and says, “A toast to us getting along again?” So he nods and smiles and touches his glass and drinks and winces at the taste, all sour and off note. And after his pizza he’s thirsty again, so drinks the rest, and Obadiah notices and fills his glass, and Tony shrugs and promises himself only two. He never gets drunk off just two.

They give up on the movie halfway through because it’s just that shit. Tony flicks through TV shows, comes across Black Mirror which some of his friends are into, and plays the first episode to that. Obadiah keeps smiling him and Tony keeps smiling back. The wine is getting to his head so he doesn’t drink anymore. He sits there with his feet curled up and his throat dry, full of pizza, warm and vaguely uncomfortable. His skin is prickling all over. He takes off his sweater, his hands clumsy and rigid. He sits and stares at the screen, trying to focus. All the mouths are moving in slow motion and the voices seem as if under water. Tony shakes his head slowly from side to side, trying to dislodge whatever’s in his ears, and disorientation rushes through him. He grabs the arm of the couch and relaxes against it, staring back at the screen. His throat is so dry and his tongue is swelling up. He grabs his glass of wine and swallows almost frantically.

And drops it. It smashes everywhere. Tony flinches back from the loudness and stares at the broken glass with trepidation. Obadiah’s hand is on his shoulder and he says something to Tony, then he gets up and comes back with a dustpan, and sweeps up at the glass. It makes a horrible scraping rattling sound that continues rattling round Tony’s head as Obadiah leaves the room. Tony tries looking back at the screen, swallowing around the water in his ears. The people bulge and fall out of the television and disintegrate on the carpet. He looks away uncomfortably. His head spins. His whole body feels heavy. All his separate arms and legs, dragging him down.

Obadiah helps him to the bedroom. Tony doesn’t go easily, hands fisted into Obadiah’s clothes as he tries to stay upright, staggering along. He wants to say something, make sense of it, but has to focus on not falling over. Obadiah sits him on the bed and hugs him close. Tony falls against him and closes his eyes. Opens them again and Obadiah’s standing in front of him, barely more than a blurry outline, taking Tony’s clothes off with coarse solid hands. Tony falls back and stares at the ceiling as Obadiah pulls his jeans down, leg by leg. Takes his underwear off. Tony is naked. He tries to crawl into bed under the duvets but Obadiah grabs him by the ankle and pulls him back, pushing Tony onto his back.

Tony loses feeling in his feet and hands and regains it all at once. He tips his head back, away from that scratching and buzzing and rattling inside his head. It’s getting too loud. Obadiah crawls on top of him, fully clothed, laying his heaviness across Tony’s legs. He kisses Tony’s neck and starts chewing at it, sucking on Tony’s skin, biting, drawing blood, leaving marks. Tony tries to push him off but Obadiah simply grabs his wrists and keeps them held tightly above Tony’s head. Tony struggles against it but he can’t move anything, has lost even the semblance of strength.

Obadiah moves away and at first Tony thinks it’s over, then hears a condom packet being torn open. Obadiah looms over him again. “No,” Tony slurs. “No, no, no. Stop.” He’s sure that if he says it enough, Obadiah will stop. Before, it only happened because Tony let it. But now he’s not letting it. He’s saying no. So it’s going to stop.

Obadiah doesn’t even seem to hear him. He fumbles between Tony’s legs and enters him roughly. Tony groans and struggles more, kicking out, pushing away. Obadiah draws up, slaps Tony across the face, a short sharp shock, then starts thrusting inside of him. The pain seems dull and faraway, a distant movement. Nausea rises up in Tony. Waves roll up either side of him, lapping against the sides of his face, then overwhelm him and he’s struggling to breathe. Obadiah still doesn’t care and keeps moving on top of Tony, grunting and shifting. He comes in a start after what seems like forever and pulls out, rolling away from Tony and pulling the condom off, throwing it over the side of the bed. He kisses Tony hungrily again, biting at his lips, grabbing his waist. Tony reacts like a marionette and lies there uselessly. Obadiah gives up, slows down, throws an arm across Tony and falls asleep.

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The promised worst has arrived. This is the beginning of a downwards spiral. As always, loved your comments from last chapter, thank you to every single one of you for taking the time to write something even if it's just small and completely making my day.  
> And just. As always, again. Thank you for reading. It really means a lot to me that there's people out there who read things that I write. And engage with it and relate to it. Some of this stuff is the private secret parts of me that no one in my real life could even guess about. And then here you are, reading my heart laid out. So, thank you.


	16. Chapter 16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The aftermath: Steve, Clint, and Natasha. 
> 
> The sun falls down from the sky and Tony falls apart.

> _I had all and then most of you_  
>  _Some and now none of you_  
>  _Take me back to the night we met_

Tony is searching through the crowd in the corridor and when he finds Steve’s face his entire stomach lurches. Steve is a head above everyone else and has never looked more beautiful, his golden hair gleaming, his blue eyes stolen from the sky, his jaw strong and shadowed, his skin glowing magnificently in sun rays caught from an open window. Tony catches him open mouthed in a laugh as he responds to something Bucky says, then in a second he turns and meets Tony’s eyes, and his whole face folds and falters and falls down.

Tony makes his awkward way towards him and says, “Can we talk?”

“Yeah,” Steve says hoarsely, and clears his throat. “Yeah, of course.”

He takes Tony’s hand and they walk outside to the bleachers together. That tiny action settles the awful restlessness inside Tony; the automatic taking of his hand and leading him somewhere, the two of them physically connected.

They sit down with an inch of cold space between them and their hands falling apart. Steve twists his fingers in his lap and says, “You’re walking strangely, are you hurt?”

“Uh, no, I’m fine,” Tony says. He tries to breathe. His heart has started racing again. “Steve. I. Fuck. I’m sorry about yesterday. I can’t believe that I ran out, that I just left you—it was so, so awful of me.”

He doesn’t dare look at Steve, staring straight ahead, but Steve shifts up to him and presses the sides of their legs together. “It’s fine. It was too soon, what I said.”

“No, I don’t—” Tony flounders. “You don’t understand. Stop.”

“Hey,” Steve soothes. “It’s fine, you freaked out, you apologised, it’s done. Yeah?”

“Wait. Steve,” Tony says frantically, desperately, thinking Steve’s not listening, thinking it’s not working—then sees Steve sitting back, quiet and waiting. Tony takes a breath and continues, reciting the speech that he’s been building up in his head all morning. “You’re perfect. You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me. I don’t know what the fuck I did to—I don’t deserve you, and I know that, and everyone knows that.” Steve makes a sound to interrupt but Tony quiets him. “No, listen, just listen. These past few months with you have been amazing. And I’ve just been waiting for, for—the other shoe to drop, for everything to get ruined, for me to ruin it. And when you said you loved me, it was a shock, I was thrown off. Because I never thought, never would’ve imagined—because you’re too perfect, for me, you know? And I realised—that I’m completely in love with you, that I’ve been in love with you since the beginning, that I don’t think I can ever, ever lose you.”

Steve kisses him abruptly. Close mouthed and sweet, his hands winding into Tony’s hair, their eyes closed, the sun heating up the tops of their heads. Steve draws back and his smile breaks out all across his face and he glows. “I love you too, Tony Stark.”

Tony lets out a breath. “Okay. Good. I did it. Fuck. I thought I was going to fuck that up, too.”

Steve rolls his eyes. “I mean, it wasn’t an amazing speech, not particularly the best I’ve heard, so don’t feel too proud.”

Tony punches him in the shoulder. “You asshole. It was wonderful.”

“Alright, it was,” Steve says, grinning again, melting, wrapping Tony in his arms and staring at him. “You’re really, really gorgeous, you know that?”

“Yeah,” Tony shrugs. “You’re lucky to have me.”

“I know I am,” Steve whispers. Tony feels caught between the seriousness of it, of real True Love and being completely genuine, and then the light hearted joking between them, and the way they veer between the two, and he loves Steve even more for it, and he feels it bubble up from his stomach and out his eyes and ears and nose and mouth and evaporate out everywhere, invisible vapour.

Steve has Tony’s face between two hands and is staring at him again, his mouth not quite a smile, a furrow between his eyes. “You look sort of—you’re a bit—”

“What?” Tony frowns back.

“You’re just—are you feeling alright?”

“Yeah, amazing. Why?”

“Are you high?”

Tony frowns harder. “Um, maybe sort of, but I only had a tiny bit, hours ago, it’s all mostly gone now.”

“It’s the morning.”

“Yeah, I was up—early.”

“I thought you’d stopped doing all that, though? All the drugs stuff.”

“I had, I am,” Tony struggles, wanting to get back to the warmth, to them smiling at each other, falling for each other over and over again. “It was only a bit. Can we leave it?”

“I just don’t see why you had to be high to tell me you loved me,” Steve says.

“I’m not high!” Tony says and Steve flinches back and he realises he shouted, and he takes deep breaths and calms down and lowers his voice. “Look, stop, come on. You’re ruining this. Please let’s not argue, not now.”

Steve moves away from Tony and rubs his hands over his face. “Okay. You’re right, we never argue, we won’t. I just. Sometimes it seems like it’s just us, like we’re having a real honest conversation, but then you’re always just on drugs—”

“That’s not fair,” Tony protests. “I stopped for ages, you know I did. Today was a slip up but it won’t happen again. I quit, didn’t I say I had?”

“Yeah,” Steve says, his eyes searching Tony’s face, looking for something, looking everywhere, and Tony tries to open himself up, to not hide anything, to just show; this is me, I’m here, I love you. But then Steve’s eyes catch on something on Tony’s neck, and Tony looks down reflexively, and sees his high necked shirt has slipped and a mottled green is creeping up from the collar. Steve says quietly, “Your neck. You’re bruised.”

“I’m not,” Tony says immediately, hand coming up to cover himself.

“You are, I just saw it. Was that—is it a hickey?”

Tony’s skin burns and splits open and his blood explodes and fear races through him all in a precise second, and the weight of last night is suddenly crushing on him, something that he’s been trying to forget ever since he woke up alone and aching and guilty, and the sour taste of it is in his mouth, the feeling of Obadiah on top of him, of being _helpless._ And his mouth won’t open, the words are caught in his throat, and Tony is silent and marked and not saying a word, and oh God what can he say, what could he possibly say?

Steve says more firmly. “I know what—hickeys look like. I don’t think that was me. It definitely wasn’t me.” And he falters again, and slows down, and stares at Tony and waits for him to interrupt and explain himself, but Tony is a resolute silent, and Steve grudgingly and brokenly has to carry on. “And you were limping, earlier. And last night after you ran away—and you didn’t answer my calls or messages all night—and—and now you’re here, and you’re high, and the hickey…”

And he can’t, he can’t finish it. Tony makes himself meet Steve’s eyes and he sees the aching depth of betrayal in them. Tony opens his mouth and tries to say something, but can only say, “Steve, I…” and then he trails off, lost, losing everything.

Steve tries, “Tony? Did you cheat on me?”

And then it’s out there. A solid, real question. A question that demands to be answered. A _yes_ or _no._ Tony has to pick one, he has to. Every second longer that he sits here in this awful silence is a second longer he spends ripping Steve apart.

Steve falters, “You can just say—you can just say no. Say you didn’t. And I’ll believe you, just like that. I won’t ask any more questions or think about it ever again. Just say you didn’t cheat on me. Last night. Please, Tony. Please just say it.” His voice is breaking at the end of it and he is halting and faltering and the words are tripping over themselves and his blue, blue eyes are glossy and opened wide at Tony, begging for that one word, _no,_ for Tony to not have done what they both already know he did.  

Tony opens his mouth again but still, _still_ nothing comes out, not a _yes_ or a _no_ , not a desperate _I love you, we can work this out, I’m sorry._ And the worst part it, Tony _knows,_ he knows he can still fix this, he can either say that no he didn’t cheat and Steve will leave it alone and it might fester in the back of his mind but he will leave it and they will move on and forget about it, or Tony can say yes, yes but I’m sorry, yes but I love you, yes but you have to forgive me. And Steve will. He will take his apology and forgive him and love him back, and all Tony has to do is ask for it.

And then the silence has gone on for too long and for Steve, that’s answer enough. “What happened?” Steve asks lowly. “Did you have sex?”

Tony looks down with his eyes burning and his hands clenched and his heart thudding madly and he can’t bear it, he can’t bear any of it, and now he has to speak, he has to give Steve at least that, as everything else between them fragments and shatters and is broken beyond repair, just minutes after _I love you._

“Yes,” he answers hollowly.

“Okay,” Steve says, and stands up, and paces away, and comes back, and doesn’t look up. “It was last night? After you left?”

“Yes,” is all Tony can say.

“Why?” Steve asks with his voice cracking around the word, but it’s not a real question. Steve says, “Who was it with?”

“Someone older. You don’t know them.”

“Were you drunk?”

“Yes.”

“Did you enjoy it?”

Tony doesn’t answer.

Steve puts a hand on Tony’s shoulder, snatches it away just as fast. “Tony. Did you enjoy it? You must have. It must have been worth it, right? Was it worth it?”

Tony doesn’t answer.

“Was it because of me? What did I do?”

Tony doesn’t answer.

“Did you even love me?”

Tony flinches at that, and still doesn’t answer. His throat is blocked up with grief and loss and guilt. He doesn’t look up and listens to Steve walk away.

 

**\--**

Tony has a bag of ketamine taped to the inside of his locker, for emergencies. Now he peels it off and brings it outside back to the bleachers and does every little bit of the sharp white powder, outside in the hollowness, in the dead emptiness, not even a breeze brushing through, just Tony and his frantic beating heart and his sweat and his sadness.

And then the sky is too bright and his footsteps are too loud and his chest hurts too much. He manages to swing his legs up and lies on his back, staring upwards. The sun grows the more he stares at it. It bloats and swallows up everything, painfully white. Then it falls out of the sky. It comes plummeting gracelessly towards earth and Tony watches it dispiritedly, vaguely afraid. The sun falls straight onto the city and gets stuck on the tops of the New York buildings and is punctured by the sharpest skyscrapers, and deflates as it lies there uselessly, bleeding out heat and light and fierceness.

Clint and Natasha find him some time later, once he’s wandered through his head for a long while, once the sun has dissolved to nothing, once he’s empty and still. They sit either side of him, faces drawn and stern. Tony doesn’t sit up. He lies there. Clint picks up the empty bag of ketamine and sniffs at it and pushes it into his pocket. Tony stares upwards and feels like his eyes are bleeding. Natasha finally says, “Tony, what happened?”

“What happened with what?” he asks emptily, and is surprised that his voice still works, that he’s even alive. He feels nonexistent, an apparition.

“You know what, Tony,” Clint says with a sandpaper rough edge to his voice. “Steve. The boy you’re supposed be in love with?”

“Oh,” Tony says. He closes his eyes. He doesn’t even know why he’s trying. “Didn’t he tell you?”

“Yeah, he did, but we want to hear your side,” Natasha says gently.

“Why?”

“Because we’re your friends first, and we believe you first, no matter what.”

“But what if he was saying the truth?”

“I don’t think he was,” Clint says. “Because if he was, that means you’re a complete dickhead. But we know you, and we know that’s not true, and we want to know what you have to say.”

Tony finally sits himself up and looks at them both intently. They glow, faintly. “It’s all true.”

“Tony,” Natasha says, and touches his hand. “It’s not, or there’s something we don’t know, or something you’re not telling us, or something _missing,_ because you’re not like that, we know you’re not. We know you love him.”

“Not anymore,” Tony says, and feels a sob rise in his chest, but focuses manically on repressing it. “Uh. I think you should both leave. Please.”

“Just tell us, Tony,” Clint says again. “He says that you cheated. It’s not true, is it?”

Tony shrugs.

Clint deflates. “Jesus. Tony. Jesus. Why’d you do it? Were you high? Was it like Lydia again? You just kissed someone, right?”

“Fucked someone,” Tony corrects, expansive, spread out.

“Fuck,” Clint says. He squeezes his eyes shut. “Why? What happened? Do you not like him anymore? Did you just want an easy way out?”

Tony can’t speak. He shrugs again.

“Could you not have broke up with him nicely? We like those guys, Tony. We wanted to be friends with them. Stay friends with them. We told you that. They’re really—they were really amazing, all of them.”

“I _know_ that,” Tony says.

“So why did you do it?”

What answer does he have for that? It’s the same as with Steve. Silence is all he can give.

“There must have been a reason,” Natasha says. “I know there’s a reason.”

“Maybe you just don’t know me that well.”

“Maybe we don’t,” Clint says, wild around the eyes.

That strikes at something in Tony and he feels anger and terror crack through him in equal measure, cutting through the high. “I told you to leave already, didn’t I?”

“We’re not going to. We’re here for you. Talk to us, we’re your friends,” Natasha tells him.

“You’re not acting like it,” Tony says, bitter.

“You’re being unreasonable,” she starts.

“Don’t talk to me like a fucking child.”

“Do not swear at her,” Clint says dangerously.

“Clint,” she says, frowning at him.

“If you don’t want me to swear at you, then fucking leave, alright? How many times do I have to say it?”

“Tony,” Natasha says loudly, so Tony stands up instead and grabs his bag and speed walks away.

**\--**

After that there’s no one left to leave him and Tony is back to his ghastly emptiness, except now the pain of it, the loss, is creeping in the edges of his awareness and he keeps stumbling with shock as it hits him every so often that oh, God—he’s lost everything.

He’s not about to stay in school and face anyone else so he leaves, shakily, buys a coffee from the café and walks to a park, sits on a bench near the pond, scalds his tongue. Sets the coffee down next to him and watches the ducks swim round and round in circles and the light reflect off the water, blindingly, so bright it hurts, so bright that Tony’s eyes start watering. And he twists his hands in his lap and cries very silently, eyes wide open and lips pressed tight, and digs his fingers into his legs. He wipes at his face with the back of his hands and wills himself to stop, but can’t, and is stranded alone on that bench, adrift, terrified. He can’t breathe, through all these hitched little sobs, shaking him, tangling up his lungs, running over each other into his throat. He can’t escape from how dangerously sad he is, from all of it weighing him down. From his hopeless, silent crying, shaking him, feeling like it’ll never end. The world is crashing inwards and the sun is still shining and Tony is broken. His coffee has cooled down and he drinks it all in frantic gulps, throwing back the bitterness, as if it’s going to solve anything, as it it’ll solve everything.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you thank you thank you for all your lovely comments last chapter! And I did promise you, didn't I, that it would get worse? Well, here it is. Getting worse. And I hope you all end up as depressed and angsty as me. (Joking! There's a happy ending eventually!)
> 
> Aaaand I guess that's it. Next chapter in the works and will be updated before my exams. Probably the night before as I stay up and panic and try to not fail and fail anyway. Have a fun summer, guys. Tell me bits about your life! What are you like? Who are you all? I can't believe there's hundreds of you who actually read this but apparently there is. I love you all! Thank you for reading!


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